UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


Class  Book  Volume 

332  4,^ 


|rHE  "FIRST  CONCERN  OF  GOOD  GOVERNMENT 
SHOULD  BE  THE  WELFARE  OF  THE 
COMMON  PEOPLE 


[The  Bond  and  the  Dollar 

(100th  Thousand) 


Enlarged  and  Revised  to  Date 


'History  of  the  Conspiracy  of  the  Money  Power  against  the  Masses 

AND  OF  THE  THREATENED  SUBVERSION  OF  PUBLIC  LIBERTY 


(genesis  of  the  bond-monster, 

HOW  HE  BECAME  KING 

AND  WHAT  HE  PURPOSES  TO  DO 


An  Appeal  to  American  Patriots  and  Freemen 


By  John  Clark  Ridpath 


For  sale  by  Booksellers  and  Newsdealers .  By  mail 
Single  Copies ,  io  Cents 


THE  ARENA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
Corley  Square,  Boston,  Mass. 
September,  1896 


Tft-'VX 

Rl3L 


Copyright,  1896, 

By  John  Clark  Ridpath. 
All  rights  reserved. 


Vol.  3,  No.  7.  September,  1896. 

Copley  Square  Series. 

(New  Series.) 

Published  Monthly. 

Entered  at  Boston  Post  Office  as  Second  Class  Matter. 
Price,  10  cents. 


1+0' lift* 


JOHN  CLARK  RIDPATH. 


John  Clark  Ridpath,  the  historian,  is  a  native  of  Putnam  County, 
Indiana.  His  ancestors,  on  both  sides,  were  old  Virginians  from  before 
the  Revolution. 

His  childhood  was  passed  in  a  frontier  home.  His  education  was 
obtained  first  in  the  country  schools  of  the  neighborhood  and  afterward 
in  De  Pauw  University,  from  which  he  was  graduated  with  the  highest 
honors  in  1863. 

After  six  years  of  teaching  he  was  elected  to  the  professorship  of 
English  literature  in  his  Alma  Mater,  and  two  years  afterward  was 
i  transferred  to  the  chair  of  history  and  political  philosophy. 

In  1879  he  was  elected  vice-president  of  the  university,  and  while 
occupying  this  position  was  chiefly  instrumental  in  procuring  the 
De  Pauw  endowment  upon  which  the  institution  rests. 

Professor  Ridpath’s  career  as  an  author  began  in  1876,  when  he  pub¬ 
lished  his  Academic  History  of  the  United  States. 

This  was  followed  by  his  Grammar  School  History  and  soon  afterward 
by  his  Popular  History  of  the  United  States.  The  last-named  work  has 
reached  a  sale  of  nearly  four  hundred  thousand  copies.  From  the  date 
pf  its  publication  the  author  devoted  himself  more  and  more  to  the 
preparation  of  historical  and  biographical  works. 

In  1885  his  History  of  the  World  was  published  iD  four  volumes. 
This  work  has  reached  a  sale  of  one  hundred  thousand  sets  —  a  most 
■remarkable  sale  for  so  expensive  and  solid  a  work. 

In  the  intervals  of  heavier  composition  Professor  Ridpath  has  written 
:  several  standard  and  popular  biographies.  The  latest  of  these  is  The  Life 
i  and  Times  of  William  E.  Gladstone ,  a  work  now  in  press. 

j  In  1893  he  published  his  Great  Paces  of  Mankind ,  which  is,  perhaps, 
1  his  most  important  work.  “  This  work  alone,”  says  an  eminent 
•  German  professor,  “would  place  its  author  in  the  front  rank  as  a 
/philosophical  historian.” 

The  publications  of  John  Clark  Ridpath  now  extend  to  fully  twenty- 
five  volumes,  all  of  which  have  been  received  with  great  and  solid  favor 
by  the  public.  Since  1885  he  has  devoted  himself  altogether  to 
!  authorship.  In  that  year  he  resigned  his  professorship  and  vice¬ 
presidency  in  the  university  and  began  to  be  exclusively  a  literary  man. 
He  had  already  acquired  a  wide  reputation  as  a  public  speaker,  lecturer, 
and  writer  on  various  subjects  of  general  concern.  He  is  to-day  in  the 
very  front  rank  in  both  scholarship  and  general  culture,  and  is  regarded 
as  a  thinker  of  rare  powers. 

He  has  always  been  deeply  interested  in  the  welfare  of  the  country 
and  the  progress  of  society.  His  writings  are  those  of  a  patriot  and  a 
publicist.  His  chief  concern  has  been  to  contribute  something  of  merit 
and  inspiration  to  the  age  in  which  he  lives.  His  recent  appearance  in 
the  political  field  was  not  of  his  own  choosing,  but  was  the  result  of  a 
public  movement  which  he  could  not  control. 

The  present  publication  is  his  appeal  to  the  people.  It  is  directed  to 
the  country  at  large,  and  only  incidentally  to  the  people  of  his  own 
State  and  district. 

It  is  in  the  light  of  these  considerations  that  this  publication,  which  has 
already  reached  its  one  hundredth  edition  and  is  believed  by  many  to  be 
the  most  important  contribution  thus  far  put  forth  in  the  interest  of  the 
financial  independence  of  the  American  people,  is  to  be  read  and  under¬ 
stood. 


New  York,  Sept.  18,  1896. 


H.  H.  G. 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  WORKINGMAN. 


Jrl3  was  my  father,  and  is  dead.  He  was  a  pioneer,  a 
patriot,  a  humble  farmer.  He  helped  to  hew  down  the 
forest  of  my  native  state  —  the  jewel  of  the  Ohio  Valley. 
He  cut  away  the  thickets  and  joined  with  his  neighbors  in 
casting  up  a  highway  and  gathering  out  the  stones  for  the 
coming  day.  For  companionship  he  had  Her —  and  the  chil¬ 
dren.  I  stood  beside  him  when  he  died ;  I  folded  his  arms 
across  his  honest  breast,  and  made  a  vow. 

The  long  and  fatal  fever  had  burned  up  everything  but  his 
hands  ;  they  were  as  big  and  unconquerable  as  ever.  I  said, 
“He  was  a  toiler  —  I  will  take  up  the  task  of  his  hands  and 
the  purposes  of  his  heart.  He  was  one  of  the  common  people. 

I  also  will  be  one  of  the  common  people.  I  will  love  them,  and 
honor  them,  and  defend  them.  I  will  believe  in  them,  as  he  did, 1 
and  will  trust  them.  If  they  ever  have  a  cause ,  that  cause 
shall  be  mine.  If  they  have  a  hope  or  an  aspiration  I  will 
share  it.  Whoever  attempts  to  injure  them,  to  take  away 
their  rights,  to  oppress  them,  to  enslave  them,  shall  be  my 
enemy  —  not  because  I  hate  him  or  would  do  him  hurt,  but 
because  he  is  unjust  and  cruel! 


New  Yoiik,  September,  1896. 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


1.  Genests  of  a  Monster. 

Thirty-one  years  ago  the  American  Republic  found  itself 
at  the  end  of  a  great  Civil  War.  During  that  conflict  con¬ 
ditions  had  arisen  in  the  United  States  out  of  which  the 
present  alarming  contest  of  the  people  with  the  money  power 
has  sprung.  The  Civil  War  was  the  beginning  of  what  we 
have  now  inherited.  That  war  was  not  indeed  the  cause  but 
rather  the  occasion  and  excuse  of  the  great  struggle  which  has 
begun  in  earnest  in  America  for  the  preservation  of  popular 
liberty  and  the  restoration  of  the  rights  of  man. 

War  preys  on  two  things — life  and  property;  but  he 
preys  with  a  partial  appetite.  Feasting  on  life,  he  licks  his 
jaws  and  says,  “  More,  by  your  leave  !  ”  Devouring  prop¬ 
erty,  he  says,  between  grin  and  glut,  “  This  is  so  good  that  it 
ought  to  be  paid  for?”  Into  the  vacuum  of  the  wasted  life 
rush  the  moaning  winds  of  grief  and  desolation ;  into  the 
vacuum  of  the  wasted  property  rushes  the  goblin  of  debt. 
The  wasted  life  is  transformed  at  length  into  a  reminiscent 
glory;  the  wasted  property  becomes  a  hideous  nightmare. 
The  heroes  fallen  rise  from  their  bloody  cerements  into  ever¬ 
lasting  fame  ;  the  property  destroyed  rises  from  the  red  and 
flame-swept  field  as  a  spectral  vampire,  sucking  the  still 
warm  blood  of  the  heroic  dead  and  their  posthumous  babes, 
to  the  tenth  generation. 

The  name  of  the  vampire  is  Bond.  The  vampire  is  a 
beast  that  survives  and  flourishes  by  sucking  the  breath  and 
blood  of  nobler  creatures. 

On  the  1st  of  March,  1866,  the  national  debt  of  the  United 
States,  entailed  by  the  Civil  War,  reached  the  appalling  max¬ 
imum  of  nearly  three  thousand  millions  of  dollars.  In  exact 
figures  the  sum  total  was  $2,827,868,959.46.  The  American 
people  were  inexperienced  in  such  business.  They  had 
never  known  the  incubus  before.  Europe  had  known  it, 
but  not  America.  For  a  long  time  the  public  debt  of  the 
nation  had  been  so  small  as  to  be  disregarded.  Now  all  of  a 
sudden  with  the  terrible  exigences  of  the  war,  the  debt  ex¬ 
panded  and  settled  over  the  landscape  like  a  cloud  from 
Vesuvius,  darkening  from  shore  to  shore. 

So  far  as  the  people  and  the  government  were  concerned, 
it  was  an  honest  debt.  The  method  and  intent  of  Lincoln 


l 


2 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


and  the  great  men  around  him  in  1862-63  were  as  sincere 
and  just  as  they  were  humane  and  patriotic.  As  for  the 
American  people,  they  were  always  honest.  The  nation  was 
in  deadly  peril,  and  must  be  rescued  at  whatever  cost.  The 
war  was  a  devouring  demon.  With  the  explosion  of  every 
shell,  the  product  of  a  hundred  toiling  hands  was  instantly 
vaporized ;  for  the  bomb  is  not  filled,  as  many  suppose,  with 
only  powder  and  iron  and  death,  but  with  the  potatoes  and 
milk  and  biscuit  of  mankind.  At  intervals  the  expenditure 
was  more  than  a  million,  and  sometimes  more  than  two 
millions  of  dollars  a  day.  The  government  had  nothing  of 
its  own,  did  not  venture  to  take  anything  as  its  own,  and 
must  therefore  support  itself  by  loans  or  perish.  Con¬ 
forming  to  the  method  of  the  age,  the  nation  borrowed  from 
the  accumulations  of  the  people,  and  gave  them  therefor  its 
promises  to  pay. 

The  promises  to  pay  got  themselves  into  a  bond. 

It  is  the  order  of  modern  society  that  he  who  has  may  lend 
to  him  who  has  not,  and  receive  his  own  with  usury.  This 
principle  was  adopted  by  the  American  republic  in  the  day  of 
trial.  The  means  necessary  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war 
were  not  taken  —  as  the  life  was  taken  —  but  were  bor¬ 
rowed.  The  quadrennium  was  an  epoch  of  prodigious 
borrowing.  A  great  part  of  the  lending  was  patriotic ;  but 
much  of  it,  even  at  the  first,  was  interested,  and  was  mixed 
with  contrivance  and  ulterior  designs. 

The  currency  which  had  to  be  provided  to  meet  the  start¬ 
ling  emergency  that  had  overtaken  the  American  people  was, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  made  to  be  a  legal  tender  in  the 
payment  of  debts.  The  government  must  needs  have  such  a 
money.  All  metallic  money  —  as  is  its  invariable  habit 
under  such  circumstances  —  slunk  away  and  hid  itself  in 
dark  coffers,  mostly  beyond  the  sea.  What  did  the  dealeis 
in  gold  care  for  liberty,  for  the  waste  of  human  life,  for  the 
republic,  for  the  Union  made  sacred  by  the  sacrifices  and 
blood  of  our  fathers  ? 


u  The  merit  of  the  country  marched  and  filled  the  Union  ranks, 

The  money  of  the  country  marched  and  filled  the  English  banks ; 

At  last  the  war  was  over  —  the  soldiers  ceased  to  roam  — 

They  came  with  bugles  playing,  the  specie  sneaked  back  home  !  ” 

It  was  intended  by  those  who  first  contrived  the  legal- 
tender  currency  that  it  should  be  absolute  money  in  the 
payment  of  all  debts  of  whatever  kind.  Thaddeus  Stephens, 
chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means,  declared 


GOVERNMENTS  PREFER  PROPERTY  TO  LIFE. 


3 


this  to  be  the  purpose  and  intent  of  the  Legal-tender  Act. 
The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  has  since  decided 
by  a  voice  of  eight  to  one  that  Congress  possessed  —  and 
possesses  —  the  right  and  power  to  make  such  a  money, 
whether  in  Avar  or  in  peace.  The  validity  of  the  Legal- 
tender  Act  is  now  as  much  a  part  of  the  constitutional 
history  of  the  United  States  as  is  the  abolition  of  African 
slavery.  But  they  who  were  skilful  in  watching  their  own 
interests,  even  in  the  throes  of  our  national  break-up  and 
impending  catastrophe,  adroitly  contrived  that  the  national 
currency  should  have  an  exception  in  it  in  favor  of  those  who 
should  lend  their  means  to  the  government.  They  who 
should  make  such  loan  should  receive  therefor  a  bond ;  and 
the  interest  on  the  bond —  as  also  the  duties  on  imports  of 
foreign  goods  —  was  exempt  from  the  legal  tender  of  paper 
and  reserved  for  coin . 

Thus  came  the  bonded  debt  of  the  United  States.  The 
debt  grew  with  the  progress  of  the  war,  until  it  seemed  to 
approach  infinity.  The  nation  swayed  and  struggled  through 
the  bloody  sea,  and  came  at  last  to  the  shore.  The  process 
of  debt  making,  however,  had  acquired  so  great  momentum  that 
it  was  difficult  to  get  it  checked  and  reversed.  In  the  summer 
of  1865  the  soldiers  of  the  union  army  were  mustered  out 
and  remanded  to  their  homes.  By  August  the  work  was 
done ;  the  grand  army  was  no  more ;  but  such  was  the  con¬ 
fusion  that  for  fully  six  months  longer  the  expenditure  rolled 
on  without  abatement. 

The  great  question  which  confronted  the  nation  at  the 
beginning  of  1866  was  the  management  of  the  debt.  There 
Avere  bonds  galore ;  a  seven-thirty  series  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  millions,  by  Act  of  July  17,  1861 ;  then  five  hundred 
and  fifteen  millions  of  five-twenties,  by  the  Act  of  February 
25,  1862,  becoming  more  than  twelve  hundred  millions  by 
subsequent  issues ;  then  ten-forties  in  several  series  —  7.3  per 
cents,  6  per  cents,  5  per  cents,  4.5  per  cents,  4  per  cents ;  plain 
bonds  at  the  first,  and  coin  bonds  finally  —  short  loans  and 
long  loans  and  longer  loans,  but  always  becoming  longer ,  until 
a  measure  of  calm  ensued,  and  the  nation  found  opportunity 
to  take  account  of  its  losses  and  consider  the  question  of 
payment. 

2.  Governments  Prefer  Property  to  Life. 

If  governments  had  the  same  care  for  the  life  of  the  people 
as  for  the  property  of  those  who  possess  property,  then 


4 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


national  debts  would  not  be  made,  or  at  least  not  perpet¬ 
uated,  by  the  event  of  war.  It  had  been  an  act  of  infinite 
mercy  on  the  part  of  the  government  of  the  United  States  in 
that  day  to  take  directly  whatever  was  necessary  —  as  it  did 
take  whatever  men  were  necessary  —  for  the  suppression  of 
the  Rebellion.  That  course  would  have  ended  it.  Had  that 
almost  unprecedented  policy  been  temperately  and  success¬ 
fully  pursued,  the  cost  of  the  war  would  hardly  have  been 
one-fifth  of  what  it  has  become ;  the  bond  would  never  have 
existed ;  the  wealth  of  the  people  would  not  have  been  con¬ 
centrated  in  the  hands  of  a  few;  the  present  harrowing 
a: id  dangerous  conditions  of  American  life  would  not  have 
supervened,  and  the  victorious  defense  of  the  Union  would 
long  ere  this  have  become  a  glorious  and  unclouded  remi¬ 
niscence. 

Neither  shall  any  one  truthfully  aver  that  making  war 
without  making  a  national  debt  is  an  absurd  vagary.  That 
would  be  to  condemn,  as  a  financial  quack,  no  less  a  person¬ 
age  than  William  E.  Gladstone.  Mr.  Gladstone  is,  without 
a  doubt,  the  greatest  statesman  in  finance  that  England  has 
produced  within  the  present  century.  It  has  been  the  one 
ruling  and  undeviating  principle  of  his  policy,  alike  in  peace 
and  in  war,  to  make  the  annual  revenues  under  all  circum¬ 
stances ,  meet  the  annual  expenditures  of  the  empire.  He 
began  to  battle  for  this  principle  in  1853,  when,  as  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer,  he  had  to  provide  the  means  for  the  prose¬ 
cution  of  the  Crimean  War.  On  this  question,  he  and 
Disraeli  divided  forever.  The  former  proposed  to  provide 
the  means  of  war  by  increasing  the  annual  revenues ;  the 
latter  proposed  to  borrow.  Mr.  Gladstone  did  adopt  the 
method  of  paying  as  he  Avent,  and  held  to  it  until  the  over¬ 
throw  of  the  Aberdeen  ministry.  He  stoutly  affirmed  in 
presenting  his  first  budget  that,  war  or  no  war,  the  national 
debt  of  Great  Britain  should  not  be  increased,  but  that  the! 
cost  of  supporting  the  British  army  in  Asia  should  be  met 
year  by  year  by  an  increase  in  the  income  taxes  and  excises.) 
This  policy  Avas  supported  by  the  Prince  Consort,  Avhoi 
declaied  it  to  be  “  manly,  statesmanlike,  and  honest the 
policy  of  borrowing,  the  Prince  characterized  as  “ convenient , 
cowardly,  and  perhaps  popular .”  He  ought  to  have  added 
suicidal.  As  long  as  Gladstone  remained  in  office,  he  forceu 
the  revenues  to  meet  the  expenditures  Avithin  the  year.  His 
principle  through  life  has  been,  in  every  emergency,  not  ty> 
borrow ,  but  to  tax  —  that  is,  to  take . 


THE  BOND  MAKES  A  POLICY. 


5 


Strange  it  is,  however,  that  pur  vaunted  and  vaunting 
civilization,  even  to  the  present  day,  perfers  property  to  man. 
It  exalts  the  one  and  tramples  on  the  other.  In  this  particu¬ 
lar,  we  have  been  even  as  the  rest.  Judging  by  the  facts, 
there  is  no  government  on  earth  to  which  its  mules  are  not 
dearer  than  its  men  !  Strange,  too,  that  whoever  appeals  on 
behalf  of  the  man  as  against  the  mule,  and  urges  the  protec¬ 
tion  of  the  one  at  the  expense  of  the  other,  is  held  to  be  an 
enemy  of  society  !  Property  in  this  particular  having  no 
conscience,  or  only  the  conscience  of  being  always  in  the 
wrong,  fortifies  itself  with  every  casuistical  and  fallacious 
argument  known  to  the  category  of  self-interest,  and  puts 
down  both  the  man  and  his  advocates.  The  44  sacred  rights 
of  property,”  meaning  the  light  of  something  that  belongs  to 
life  to  seize  that  life  by  the  throat  and  strangle  it,  are  pro¬ 
mulgated  aud  upheld  with  constitution  and  statute  and 
bayonet ;  while  the  44  rights  of  man,”  so  much  in  vogue  in 
the  great  epoch  of  regeneration  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  are,  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth,  positively  under 
the  ban  in  every  civilized  State  of  the  world.  According  to 
the  plutocratic  lexicons  of  at  least  two  continents,  the  44  rights 
of  man  ”  have  come  to  signify  merely  anarchy. 

3.  The  Bond  Makes  a  Policy. 

Our  staggering  nation  arose  and  stood.  The  horizon 
cleared.  The  government  of  the  republic  was  preserved  for 
posterity.  It  found  itself,  however,  in  the  grip  of  a  python, 
from  which,  after  thirty-one  years  of  writhing,  it  is  less  able  to 
free  itself  than  ever  before  since  the  close  of  the  conflict. 
In  the  course  of  the  war  and  just  afterward,  it  was  discerned 
by  those  who  held  the  national  debt,  as  it  had  been  discerned 
by  some  of  them  from  the  beginning,  that  it  was  a  good 
thing  for  the  possessors.  A  great  interest  had  been  created 
by  the  battle  of  the  National  Union  for  its  life  —  the  inter¬ 
est  of  the  bond. 

It  were  vain  to  conjecture  how  many  sincere  patriots 
found  themselves  possessors  of  the  interest-bearing  obliga¬ 
tions  of  the  nation.  For  all  such  there  is  no  animadversion, 
but  rather  praise.  It  were  equally  vain  to  conjecture  how 
many  held  those  obligations  simply  for  the  profit  and  advan¬ 
tage  and  power  that  were  in  them,  and  with  no  concern 
about  the  welfare  of  the  government  or  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States ;  but  the  latter  class,  whether  many  or  few, 


6 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


increased,  and  the  former  class  decreased,  until  the  fund¬ 
holding  interest  was  consolidated  in  the  hands  of  a  party 
having  its  bifurcations  in  New  York  and  London. 

The  party  of  the  bond  became  skilful  and  adroit.  It 
began  immediately  to  fortify  itself.  It  took  advantage  of 
the  inexperience  of  the  American  people  and  of  their  legis¬ 
lators.  It  profited  by  the  mistakes  and  misplaced  confidence 
of  both.  They  who  held  the  bonds  were  wise  by  ages  of 
training  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New.  They  understood 
the  situation  perfectly,  and  adopted  as  their  method  a  policy 
embracing  two  intentions :  First,  to  perpetuate  the  bond  and 
make  it  everlasting  by  the  postponement  and  prevention  of 
payment;  second,  to  increase  the  value  of  the  currency  in 
which  all  payments  were  to  be  made  ;  that  is,  to  increase  the 
value  of  the  units  of  such  payments  as  the  payments  should 
become  due,  so  that  whatever  might  be  the  efforts  of  the  peo¬ 
ple  to  discharge  the  debt,  it  should  increase  in  value  as  rap¬ 
idly  as  they  could  reduce  it !  And  the  honest  people,  abused 
to  the  soul  by  the  politician  and  by  Shylock,  knew  not  that 
it  was  so. 

4.  Beginning  of  the  Great  Game. 

For  thirty-one  years  this  game  has  been  persistently,  skil¬ 
fully  and  successfully  carried  out.  It  has  been  a  play 
worthy  of  the  greatest  gamesters  that  ever  lived!  We  do 
not  call  to  mind  any  other  such  stake  among  the  nations  as 
that  placed  upon  the  issue ;  and  the  bondplayers  have  won 
on  every  deal.  They  have  succeeded  on  both  counts  of  their 
policy.  They  have  turned  over  the  debt  into  new  forms  of 
bond,  and  these  again  into  newer,  under  the  name  of  refund¬ 
ing,  persuading  the  people  that  the  process  was  wise  and 
needful,  and  cajoling  them  with  the  belief  that  the  rate  of 
interest  was  each  time  reduced  for  the  benefit  of  the  nation. 
It  was  done  “in  the  interest  of  the  people!”  We,  the 
holders  of  the  bond,  being  patriots,  labor  only  for  the  inter¬ 
est  of  the  people  ! 

It  is  true  that  each  act  of  refunding  and  transforming  the 
national  debt  has  lowered  somewhat  the  nominal  rate  of 
interest ;  but  at  the  same  time,  it  has  lengthened  the  period 
of  payment.  At  the  beginning,  the  date  of  payment  was  at 
the  option  of  the  government.  Then  it  was  at  five  years 
from  the  making  of  the  bond ;  then  it  was  at  ten  years ;  then 
at  twenty  years  ;  then  at  thirty  years.  Now  the  period  of 
possible  payment  has  been  extended  until  the  second  decade 


THE  NATIONAL  DEBT  IS  WORTH  MORE  THAN  EVER.  7 

of  the  next  century  cannot  witness  the  end  of  the  game.  If 
the  treasury  should  have  to-day,  or  in  the  year  1900,  a  sur¬ 
plus  of  six  billions  of  gold,  the  government  could  not  call 
and  cancel  its  bonds.  They  were  not  made  to  be  called  and 
cancelled,  but  to  be  refunded  and  perpetuated. 

Besides,  the  reduction  of  interest  has  been  a  reduction 
only  in  name.  In  no  case  has  the  reduction  been  made  until 
the  value  of  the  dollar  of  the  payment  has  been  so  enlarged 
as  more  than  to  balance  the  reduction.  The  same  thing  is 
true  of  the  payment  of  principal  as  well  as  the  payment  of 
coupon.  For  thirty  years  the  American  people  have  been 
pouring  into  that  horrid  maelstrom  the  volume  of  their  great 
resources.  They  have  paid  on  their  debt,  or  at  least  they 
have  paid,  in  this  long  period,  such  a  prodigious  sum  that 
arithmetic  can  hardly  express  it.  The  imagination  cannot 
embrace  it. 

The  people  have  never  known  —  never  realized  —  the 
incalculable  sums  which  have  been  paid  out  of  their  treasury 
in  the  ostensible  work  of  discharging  the  interest  and  princi¬ 
pal  of  the  war  debt  of  the  nation.  Sometime,  perhaps,  the 
final  aggregate  may  be  made  up  and  historically  recorded. 
Within  the  first  ten  years  after  the  conclusion  of  the  war, 
that  is,  at  the  close  of  the  fiscal  year,  1874-75,  the  govern¬ 
ment  had  already  paid,  in  interest  only,  on  the  public  debt 
$1,442,057,577.  And  this  was  but  the  beginning.  At  the 
close  of  the  year  1895,  the  interest  account  has  reached  the 
prodigious  total  of  more  than  two  billion  six  hundred  and 
thirty-five  millions  of  dollars. 

5.  The  National  Debt  is  Worth  More  than  Ever. 

We  thus  come  to  a  conclusion  that  is  apalling.  It  is  the 
truth  of  the  living  God  that  in  the  year  1896,  at  the  close  of 
summer,  the  national  debt  of  the  United  States,  in  its 
bonded  and  unbonded  forms,  will  purchase  as  its  equivalent 
in  value,  as  much  of  the  average  of  twenty-five  of  the  lead¬ 
ing  commodities  of  the  American  market,  including  real 
estate  and  labor,  as  the  same  debt  would  purchase  at  its 
maximum  on  the  first  of  March,  1866.  The  people  have  paid 
and  paid  for  thirty  years,  and  at  the  end  have  paid  just  this 
—  nothing  ! 

We  shall  not  omit  the  proof.  The  verification  of  the 
astounding  truth  that  the  people  have  paid  and  paid  and 
paid  nothing,  is  as  plain  and  irrefragable  as  any  otliet 
arithmetical  result. 


8 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


On  the  first  of  March,  1866,  the  national  debt  (being 


then  at  its  maximum)  was  in  exact  figures .  $2,827,868,959.46 

For  the  sake  of  easy  computation  the  same  may  be 

stated, . .  2,825,000,000.00 

The  debt  at  the  end  of  July,  1896,  was .  1,222,312,984.40 

For  convenience  of  counting  the  same 


may  be  given  in  round  numbers  as  $1,222,000,000.00 
To  this  add  ten  per  cent  (a  very  low 
estimate)  for  the  present  average 
premium  on  the  debt  (interest-bear¬ 
ing  and  non-interest-bearing)  above 
the  par  of  gold .  122,000,000,00 


Total  present  gold  value  of  the  debt .  $1,344,000,000.00 

On  tlie  first  of  March,  1866,  the  prices  current  of  nine 
leading  staples  of  the  American  market,  selected  broadly 
from  the  whole,  were  as  follows : 


Wheat  per  bushel,  from  $1.78  to  $2;  average, . 

Flour  per  barrel,  $10.50  to  $11;  average, . 

Cotton  per  pound, . . . 

Mess  Pork  per  barrel, . 

Sugar  per  pound, . . 

Wool  per  pound,  50  cents  to  56  cents ;  average, . 

Beef  per  cwt.,  $12  to  $18.50;  average, . 

Bar  Iron  per  pound,  6  cents  to  7  1-4  cents;  average, . 

Superior  Farming  Lands  in  Ohio  and  Mississippi  valleys, 
proximately)  per  acre, . 


....$  1.90 
....  10.75 

. . 48 

-  28.37 

. 1125 

. 53 

....  15.25 

. 0675 

(ap- 

-  75.00 


At  the  close  of  summer,  1896,  (figures  for  August  20) 
the  prices  current  for  the  same  staples  were  as  follows : 


Wheat  per  bushel, . . 

Flour  per  barrel, . 

Cotton  per  pound, . . . 

Mess  Pork  per  barrel, . . . . . 

Sugar  per  pound, . . 

W ool  per  pound, . 

Beef  per  cwt., . . . • . 

Bar  Iron  per  pound, . 

Superior  Farming  Lands,  same  as  above,  in  Ohio  and  Mississippi 
Valleys  (approximately)  per  acre, . 


$  .55 

3.25 
.075 

6.25 
.0325 
.15 

7.50 

.02925 

35.00 


The  national  debt  on  the  first  of  March,  1866,  would 
therefore  purchase  of  the  above  staples  as  follows  : 


Of  wheat, .  1,486,842,105  bushels. 

Of  flour, .  262,790,697  barrels. 

Of  cotton, .  5,885,416,666  pounds. 

Of  mess  pork, .  99,576,313  barrels. 

Of  sugar, . 25,393,348,314  pounds. 

Of  wool, .  5,330,188,679  pounds. 

Of  beef, .  181,967,213  cwt. 

Of  bar  iron, . 41,851,851,851  pounds. 


Of  superior  farming  lands  as  above  (approximate¬ 
ly)  . 


37,666,666  acres. 


THE  NATIONAL  DEBT  IS  WORTH  MORE  THAN  EVER.  9 


The  national  debt  at  the  end  of  August,  1896,  will  pur¬ 
chase  of  the  above  staples  as  follows  : 


Of  wheat, . . . 

Of  flour, . 

Of  cotton, . 

Of  mess  pork, . . . . 

Of  sugar, . . . 

Of  wool, . 

Of  beef, . 

Of  bar  iron, . 

Of  superior  farming  lands  as  above  (approxi¬ 
mately)..  . . 


.  2,443,636,636  bushels. 

413,538,461  barrels. 
.17,920,000,000  pounds. 

215,040,000  barrels. 
41,353,846,154  pounds. 
8,960,000,000  pounds. 
179,200,000  cwt. 
45,948,717,417  pounds. 

38,400,000  acres. 


The  purchasing  power  of  the  national  debt  at  the  close  of 
1896  is  therefore  greater  than  was  that  of  the  national  debt 
on  March  1,  1866,  as  follows  : 


In  the  case  of  wheat  by . 

In  the  case  of  flour  by . 

In  the  case  of  cotton  by . 

In  the  case  of  mess  pork  by . 

In  the  case  of  sugar  by . 

In  the  case  of  wool  by . 

In  the  case  of  bar  iron  by . 

In  the  case  of  farming  lands  as  above  by  (approx¬ 
imately)  . . 


956,794,231  bushels. 
150,748,164  barrels. 
12,034,583,333  pounds. 

115,463,587  barrels. 
14,960,497,840  pounds. 
3,629,811,321  pounds. 
4,096,865,566  pounds. 

733,333  acres. 


« 


The  purchasing  power  of  the  national  debt  at  the  end  of 
summer,  1896,  is  less  than  it  was  on  the  first  of  March,  1866, 
as  follows  : 


In  the  case  of  beef  by 


2,767,213  cwt. 


From  the  calculation  it  is  seen  that  the  purchasing  power 
of  the  debt  at  the  end  of  summer,  1896,  is  far  greater 
than  it  was  on  March  1, 1866,  on  eight  of  the  nine  great  staples 
enumerated,  and  that  it  is  less  by  a  comparatively  small  per 
cent  on  only  one  of  the  articles  enumerated.  There  is  an 
overwhelming  preponderance  on  the  average  of  the  whole 
list  in  favor  of  the  debt  as  it  stands  at  the  close  of  the  cur¬ 
rent  summer.  That  debt,  in  a  word,  is  worth  more  to  the 
holders  than  it  was  at  its  nominal  maximum  more  than  thirty 
years  ago  !  There  is  no  kind  of  sophistical  argument  or  doc¬ 
tored  statistics  in  the  world  that  can  overcome  or  seriously 
modify  the  conclusions  here  drawn  from  premises  that  are 
incontrovertible.  Let  all  men  know  it.  Let  the  world  know 
it.  Let  the  common  man  ponder  this  appalling  statement  of 
an  undeniable  truth.  Let  our. national  authorities  know  it. 
Let  the  leaders  of  every  political  party  have  it  shouted  in 
their  ears.  Let  every  administration  that  has  been  in  power 
from  the  first  of  Grant  to  the  last  of  Cleveland  be  told  in 


10 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


trumpet  voice  that  the  publications  put  forth  from  month  to 
month  as  statements  from  the  treasury  about  the  reduction 
of  the  national  debt  by  the  payment  of  three  millions  or  seven 
millions  or  ten  millions  have  been  essentially  and  utterly 
false.  True  it  is  that  the  debt  has  been  nominally  reduced 
according  to  the  publications ;  but  it  has  never  been  so 
reduced  until,  by  the  contrivance  of  those  who  possess  it,  the 
purchasing  power  of  the  currency  in  which  the  debt  was  to 
be  paid  has  been  augmented  fully  as  much  as  the  equivalent 
of  the  payment ! 

Thus  from  month  to  month  and  from  year  to  year  the 
astounding  process  has  gone  on.  And  thus  from  year  to 
year  the  judgment  of  the  American  people  has  been  abused 
with  the  iteration  and  belief  that  they  were  paying  their  debt, 
when  in  truth  all  the  multiplied  millions  on  millions  and 
thousands  of  millions  (literally  more  than  jive  thousand  mill¬ 
ions')  which  they  have  paid  have  been  simply  contributed  to 
*  the  fundholding  class,  whose  claim,  after  a  lifetime,  is  worth 
as  much  as  it  was  at  the  beginning.  The  resources  of  a  great 
people  have  been  poured  like  a  roaring  river  into  a  sinkhole 
that  has  swallowed  all ;  and  the  golden  streams  of  the  contribu¬ 
tion  have  issued  silently  through  a  thousand  unseen  spouts 
into  the  private  reservoirs  of  the  holders  of  the  debt. 

6.  Far-reaching  Scheme  of  the  Fund-Holding 
Interest. 

The  policy  of  the  fundholding  interest  has  thus  simplified 
itself  into  (1)  the  indefinite  extension  of  the  bond,  and  (2) 
the  manipulation  of  the  dollar.  To  the  extent  that  the  first 
part  of  this  policy  has  prevailed,  the  United  States  has  been 
remanded  to  the  same  category  with  the  nations  of  Western 
Europe  having  their  perpetual  bonded  debts.  To  the  extent 
that  the  second  part  of  the  policy  has  prevailed,  the  people 
of  the  United  States  have  been  continuously  robbed  of  their 
resources  for  nearly  the  full  period  of  a  human  life.  In  the 
meantime  the  people  have  been  familiarized  with  the  propo¬ 
sition  —  put  forth  timidly  at  first  —  that  a  national  debt  is  a 
national  blessing.  It  furnishes  the  cement  —  so  runs  the 
patriot  song  —  whereby  the  moneyed  classes  are  bound  in 
devotion  to  the  government  and  become  a  part  of  it,  as  in 
England  ;  thus  the  government  is  made  strong  and  enduring. 

Meanwhile  the  various  refundings  have  been  celebrated  in 
political  paean  as  marvels  of  finance.  By  the  organs  of  the 
party  in  power  one-half  of  the  people  have  been  led  to  believe 


TO  CHANGE  THE  CONTRACT  IS  A  CRIME. 


11 


th  it  the  national  honor  is  preserved,  the  national  faith  made 
good,  and  great  economy  manifested  in  those  manipulations 
of  the  bonds  by  which,  series  after  series,  the  longer  have 
been  substituted  for  the  shorter.  The  other  half  of  the 
people,  who  would  have  discovered  the  bottom  intent  in  the 
process  and  thwarted  the  scheme  at  the  next  election,  have 
been  prevented  from  doing  so  by  the  fact  that  their  organs 
and  leaders  have  had  a  common  interest  with  them  of  the 
dominant  faction.  Several  secretaries  of  the  treasury  have 
been  made  into  great  financiers  by  becoming  the  willing 
clerks  of  the  fundholding  class  in  these  delicate  and  beauti¬ 
ful  processes  by  which  the  national  debt  is  to  be  made  ever¬ 
lasting,  with  the  accompaniment  of  popular  applause. 

But  the  extension  of  the  bonded  debt  and  the  hope  of  its 
eternal  life  were  not  the  principal  concern  of  those  who 
obtained  possession  of  it.  Their  imaginations  were  not  indeed 
much  dazzled  with  the  prospect  of  having  the  bond  merely 
perpetuated  ;  because  men  who  are  engaged  in  such  schemes 
rarely  look  be}umd  the  limits  of  their  own  lives.  It  sufficed, 
therefore,  that  the  bonded  debt  should  be  lifelong ,  with  the 
hope  of  another  avatar.  That  secured,  the  undivided  energy 
of  those  who  had  secured  it  might  be  directed  to  the  manip¬ 
ulation  of  the  dollar ;  and  it  is  safe  to  assert  that  the  skill 
developed  in  this  part  of  the  bondholding  policy  has  never 
been  elsewhere  shown  by  men.  The  complete  history  of  the 
processes  by  which,  with  contraction  and  substitution,  the 
dollar  to  be  employed  as  the  standard  of  payment  in  the  dis¬ 
charge  of  the  private  and  public  debts  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States  has  been  gradually  and  adroitly  lifted  from 
one  valuation  to  another,  until  within  thirty-one  years  (1865- 
1896)  its  purchasing  power  has  been  increased  to  the 
ratio  of  more  than  three  to  one,  could  never  be  written  or 
recited.  It  surpasses  human  credulity.  It  goes  beyond  the 
average  range  of  mortal  invention  and  fixes  itself  in  the  cate¬ 
gory  of  the  diabolical. 

7.  To  Change  the  Contract  is  a  Crime. 

To  change  a  contract  has  always  been  regarded  as  a  crime. 
The  nations  of  antiquity  legislated  strongly  against  the  prin¬ 
ciple  and  practice  of  altering  the  existing  agreements  of  men. 
Even  savages  perceive  the  utter  immorality  of  tampering 
with  a  pledge  or  promise.  To  change  a  contract  is  perfidious. 
To  do  so  is  a  gross  violation  of  the  bottom  condition  on  which 
human  society  exists,  or  can  exist.  What  is  left  when  good 


12 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


faith  disappears  from  the  conduct  and  purposes  of  men? 
When  the  individual  alters  a  note  and  writes  in  more  or  less 
the  law  calls  it  forgery,  and  the  forger  is  sent  to  prison. 
This  is  true  even  in  the  small  personal  violations  of  contract 
between  man  and  man. 

The  contract  is  sacred  and  must  be  fulfilled,  else  there  is 
an  end  of  the  social  compact.  What,  therefore,  shall  we  say 
of  the  fraudulent  and  covert  alteration  of  all  contracts  by 
changing  the  units  in  which  such  contracts  are  to  be  fulfilled, 
substituting,  by  national  authority ,  a  new  unit  or  counter,  worth 
more  than  three  times  the  unit  or  counter  agreed  upon  and 
promised  ?  Such  a  process  is,  as  Lincoln  declared  it  to  be, 
“  a  heinous  crime  against  the  people,”  a  sin  against  mankind. 

For  a  long  time  the  subtle  work  of  extending  and  trans¬ 
forming  the  bond  and  at  the  same  time  of  raising  the  value  of 
the  dollar  of  payment  was  so  easily  and  noiselessly  effected 
that  the  people  did  not  awake  to  the  realization  of  the  thing 
done  until  it  was  done.  The  class  in  whose  interest  the 
various  changes  have  been  made  have  been  enabled  to  coddle 
some,  to  hoodwink  others,  to  corrupt  many,  and  to  terrorize 
a  multitude.  We  have  seen  those  who  have  been  aroused  to 
the  pitch  of  denouncing  and  exposing  the  giant  fraud  of  the 
century,  turn  about  and  decry  as  repudiators,  enemies  of  the 
national  credit,  and  disturbers  of  “  the  business  interests  ”  of 
the  nation,  the  true  friends  of  public  honesty  and  good  faith 
among  men.  At  least  two  secretaries  of  the  treasury  have 
exhibited  to  mankind  that  species  of  tergiversation  which,  in 
the  administration  of  a  high  office,  can  hardly  be  distinguished 
from  treason  to  the  human  race. 

Let  us  then  for  a  moment  trace  the  principal  changes  that 
have  been  effected  in  the  dollar  of  account  and  payment 
under  the  dictation  and  management  of  the  money  power, 
and  with  the  cheerful  acquiescence  of  several  conniving 
administrations.  In  the  first  place,  the  great  body  of  the 
bonded  debt  of  the  nation  was  purchased  in  the  time  of  the 
war  with  the  legal-tender  paper  money  to  which  the  govern¬ 
ment  had  been  obliged  to  resort.  It  was  not  purchased  with 
gold,  for  gold  had  fled  to  covert.  There  has  been  no  other 
traitor  to  the  American  Union  and  to  the  liberties  of  the 
people  comparable  in  his  perfidy  with  gold. 

8.  Cowardice  and  Perfidy  of  Gold. 

With  the  rising  portent  of  war  specie  fled  like  a  coward 
before  the  first  blast  of  battle.  Within  ten  days  after  the 


COWARDICE  AND  PERFIDY  OF  GOLD. 


IB 


secession  of  South  Carolina  and  ten  days  before  the  “  Star  of 
the  West”  was  fired  on  in  the  harbor  of  Charleston,  every 
bank  in  New  York  suspended  specie  payments,  leaving  both 
people  and  nation  to  their  fate.  If  we  had  been  obliged  in 
that  day  to  rely  upon  metallic  money  of  any  kind  to  carry 
forward  the  tremendous  work  of  saving  the  Union,  then  of  a 
certainty  the  American  Republic  would  have  been  blown  to 
fragments  and  the  residue  of  our  liberties  would  have  been 
cast  out  on  the  ash-heap  of  history. 

This  undeniable  truth  was  recognized  then  as  it  is  undis¬ 
puted  now.  The  efficiency  of  the  greenback  currency  in 
the  suppression  of  the  Rebellion  has  never  been,  can  never 
be,  denied  or  overestimated.  Twelve  years  after  the  war, 
Hon.  William  D.  Kelley  of  Pennsylvania,  addressing  an 
assemblage  of  ex-Confederate  officers  at  Macon,  Georgia,  said : 
“  Your  leaders  were  mistaken  in  their  financial  theory.  They 
believed  that  the  United  States  could  use  nothing  but  gold 
and  silver  as  money,  and  that  as  we  had  none  of  these 
metals  we  could  not  put  armies  in  the  field  to  overwhelm 
you  or  fleets  upon  the  ocean  to  blockade  your  coasts.  Your 
leaders  had  not  studied  the  constitution  to  see  that  the  gov¬ 
ernment  has  control  of  the  question  of  what  shall  be  money. 
We  discovered  that  it  had,  and  when  we  could  not  get  gold 
or  silver  we  made  the  greenback,  and  it  was  that  that  whipped 
you.”  “Yes,”  said  one  of  the  officers  with  enthusiasm, 
u Judge  Kelley,  you  are  right;  it  was  the  greenback  that 
whipped  us.”  This  is  the  currency  that  Shylock  is  now  try¬ 
ing  to  have  cancelled  because  it  is  so  great  a  menace  to  the 
interests  of  the  people.  He  desires  to  have  the  legal-tender 
currency  destroyed  in  order  that  money  sharks  may  be  pre¬ 
vented  from  using  that  currency  to  deplete  the  national 
treasury  of  its  gold  and  in  order  that  his  own  patriotic  hands 
may  be  restrained  from  further  robbery.  Shylock  is  excited 
and  wants  to  be  held.  The  hypocrisy  of  such  a  pretence  is 
beyond  the  reach  of  satire. 

It  is  literally  true  that  the  great  Rebellion  was  suppressed 
and  the  Union  upheld  by  the  expedient  of  the  non-interest- 
bearing  paper  money  devised  in  the  presence  of  the  over¬ 
whelming  exigency  of  war  and  dismemberment.  The 
precious  metals  dived  out  of  sight.  The  world  knows  the 
story.  The  United  States  went  upon  a  basis  of  paper.  For 
four  years  of  war  and  fourteen  years  of  peace  the  finances  of 
the  nation  and  of  the  people  in  their  private  capacities  were 
conducted  on  a  legal  tender  of  paper.  Metallic  money  and 


14 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


the  money  metals  rose  rapidly  in  value,  or  at  least  in  price. 
Now  gold  was  at  a  premium  of  thirty  per  cent ;  now  fifty 
per  cent ;  now  one  hundred  per  cent ;  and  finally  one  hun¬ 
dred  and  eighty-five  per  cent  above  par.  Gold  and  silver 
money  became  a  tradition  and  a  myth.  The  people  neither 
knew  nor  cared  what  had  become  of  them. 

Owing  to  the  nefarious  exception  in  the  legal-tender  cur¬ 
rency  in  favor  of  the  interest  on  the  public  debt  and  duties 
on  imports,  a  Gold  Exchange  was  organized  in  New  York, 
and  gold  was  bought  with  which  to  pay  the  semi-annual 
coupons  of  the  bonds  and  the  duties  on  imported  goods. 
Trading  in  gold  and  in  the  speculative  margins  of  gold 
became  a  business,  in  some  sense  the  greatest  of  all  the  busi¬ 
nesses  ;  certainly  it  was  the  most  picturesque. 

9.  The  War  Debt  Made  on  a  Basis  of  Legal 
Tender. 

It  was  under  these  conditions  that  the  great  bulk  of  the 
national  debt  was  put  into  the  form  of  bonds.  The  bonds 
were  purchased  with  the  legal  money  of  the  country.  They 
were  purchased  at  par  according  to  the  standard  of  the 
greenback  currency.  The  advantage  in  purchasing  them  was 
generally  given  by  the  government  to  the  purchasers. 
Already  the  bondholder  was  a  lord  and  the  government  a 
serf  and  beggar.  Inducements  were  freely  offered  to  stimu¬ 
late  the  sale  of  the  bonds.  Payments  were  made  easy; 
slight  discounts  were  not  unusual;  interest  was  sometimes 
advanced  to  purchasers ;  aud  many  other  methods  were 
adopted  to  make  the  sale  of  the  national  securities  free  and 
copious.  Finally,  the  purchaser  of  bonds  to  the  value  of 
fifty  thousand  dollars  might,  receive  as  a  gratuity  forty-five 
thousand  dollars  in  paper  money,  and  with  that  establish  a 
bank  of  issue,  discount  and  loan. 

In  this  manner  the  national  debt  became  a  bond,  and  out 
of  the  bond  sprouted  a  thousand  banks. 

From  that  day  to  the  present  the  bond  industry  has  been 
the  one  ever-flourishing,  permanent,  and  deep-down  industry, 
not  indeed  of  the  American  people,  but  of  the  class  who  hold 
the  national  securities  and  live  by  them.  This  industry  has 
combined  with  the  leading  political  parties,  and  until  recently 
has  made  and  kept  them  a  unit  for  more  than  twenty  years. 
This  industry  has  insinuated  itself  into  the  government  and 
has  become  the  energizing  and  controlling  force  in  the  public 
life  of  the  nation;  and  before  it  all  other  industries  have 


WHAT  THE  BONDS  COST. 


15 


been  compelled  to  stagger  and  bend  and  break  until  the  bond 
not  only  rules  but  reigns. 

10.  What  the  Bonds  Cost. 

No  one  has  ever  calculated  with  certainty  the  average  cost 
of  the  government  bonds  to  the  original  purchasers.  To  do 
so  is  a  complicated  problem.  They  were  of  many  series, 
extending  over  a  span  of  years,  and  were  bought  at  different 
crises  when  the  premium  on  gold  was  rising  or  falling.  The 
higher  that  premium  rose  the  cheaper  the  bonds  were,  as 
tested  by  the 'measurement  of  gold. 

The  debt-making  epoch  of  the  Civil  War  covered  a  period 
of  four  years,  ten  months,  and  nineteen  days.  The  middle 
date  of  this  period  was  September  9,  1863 ;  but  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  the  debt  was  incurred  after  that  date.  The 
premium  on  gold  reached  fifty  per  cent  on  December  14, 
1863,  and  remained  above  that  figure  for  one  year,  three 
months,  and  twenty-seven  days,  covering  the  period  of  great¬ 
est  debt  making.  Gold  reached  two  hundred  on  the  21st 
of  June,  1864,  and  remained  above  two  hundred  until  Febru¬ 
ary  22,  1865.  It  reached  the  topmost  figure  of  two  hundred 
and  eighty-five  on  the  12th  of  July,  1864.  The  dealers  in 
bonds  called  it  a  “flurry  in  gold.”  This  was  the  period  of 
the  maximum  debt  making.  The  legal-tender  currency,  with 
which  the  bonds  at*  that  crisis  were  purchased,  was  worth 
thirty-five  cents  by  the  gold  standard.  It  was  the  very  hey¬ 
day  when  the  bond-nest  was  feathered  for  the  laying  of  the 
golden  egg. 

By  the  measurement  of  gold  it  is  probable  that  the  aver¬ 
age  cost  of  the  “five-twenties”  to  the  purchasers  was  not 
more  than  fifty-five,  or  certainly  not  more  than  sixty-five 
cents  to  the  gold  dollar.  Nearly  all  the  other  series  were  pur¬ 
chased  at  a  like  enormous  discount,  as  tested  by  the  standard 
of  coin.  In  the  sale  of  the  bonds,  before  the  debt  reached 
its  maximum  in  March  of  1866,  the  standard  of  the  legal- 
tender  paper  was  uniformly  observed.  It  was  by  the  com¬ 
mon  measure  of  the  money  of  the  country  that  the  whole 
original  debt  was  sold,  and  mostly  by  that  measure  that  it 
was  funded  and  refunded  for  at  least  fourteen  years  after 
Appomattox.  But  the  mythical  gold  barometer  kept  in  the 
safe  in  Lombard  Street  in  London  showed  that  the  pur¬ 
chases  of  the  bonds  were  actually  made  at  prices  ranging 
from  about  forty-six  to  seventy  cents  to  the  coin  dollar. 


16 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


11.  Profound  Intrigue  of  the  Bondholders. 

By  the  close  of  the  war  the  seven-thirty  bonds  were 
already  falling  due.  The  “  five-twenties  ”  would  be  due  in 
a  short  time.  That  is,  in  a  short  time  the  government  would 
would  have  the  option ,  but  not  the  necessity ,  of  redeeming 
them.  And  now  it  was  that  the  fundholding  interest  put 
itself  in  antagonism  to  the  national  welfare,  and  conceived 
the  project  of  doubling  its  investment  at  one  stroke  by  com¬ 
pelling  the  payment  of  all  the  bonds  in  coin.  They  had  been 
purchased  on  the  basis  of  one  currency.  That  currency  was 
worth  only  about  half  as  much,  unit  for  unit,  as  the  mythical 
metallic  currency  which  had  now  become  only  a  reminis¬ 
cence.  Or,  to  put  it  the  other  way,  the  phantom  metallic 
currency  was  worth  at  least  two  for  one  of  the  currency  of 
all  business,  of  all  manufacture,  of  all  production,  of  all 
accounting ;  that  is,  two  for  one  of  the  currency  of  the 
people  and  the  nation.  The  holders  of  the  bonds  perceived 
that  if,  under  these  conditions,  they  could  secure  a  statutory 
declaration  of  the  payment  of  both  principal  and  interest  of 
the  five-twenty  bonds  in  coin,  then  they  would  have  gained, 
at  the  expense  of  the  overburdened  nation,  not  only  the  prin¬ 
cipal  and  the  legitimate  interest  to  which  they  were  entitled 
and  which  ought  to  have  satisfied,  but  also  about  two  for  one 
on  their  whole  investment! 

The  stake  was  worthy  of  the  trial.  The  game  might  well 
be  played  with  all  the  skill  and  intrigue  and  specious  formal¬ 
ity  of  which  human  nature  is  capable.  On  one  side  of  the 
table  sat  the  representatives  of  the  bond ;  on  the  other  side  sat 
the  American  people :  and  the  bond  won  !  By  the  Act  of  March 
18,  1869,  entitled  “An  Act  to  Strengthen  the  Public 
Credit,”  etc.,  but  which  ought  to  have  been  entitled  “  An 
Act  to  Transfer  the  Resources  of  the  American  People  to 
the  Hands  of  a  Few  under  Sanction  of  Law,”  it  was  decreed 
that  the  bondholder  should  have  his  two  for  one  ;  that  the 
five-twenties  and  all  like  obligations  of  the  government, 
whether  they  were  or  were  not  by  their  own  terms  payable  in 
coin,  should  now  be  made  so  payable  ;  that  the  national 
credit  required  that  a  bond  which  had  been  purchased  in  one 
currency  should  be  paid  in  another  currency  worth  twice  as 
much ;  that  the  property  loaned  to  the  republic  for  the  sup¬ 
pression  of  the  Rebellion  should  be  returned  twofold  beside 
the  interest ;  that  the  holder  of  the  national  obligation,  in 
addition  to  being  preserved  whole  and  harmless,  should  be 


FIRST  LEAGUE  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT,  ETC.  17 

enriched  by  law  at  the  expense  of  the  people ;  but  that  the 
widow  who  had  given  her  four  sons  to  her  country  and  had 
followed  them  one  by  one  to  their  last  resting-places  under 
the  apple  trees  in  the  orchard,  should  receive  back  nothing 
but  weeds  and  that  celestial  sorrow  which  transfigured  her 
face  evermore  into  the  face  of  an  angel ! 

At  the  time  when  the  44  Act  to  Strengthen  the  Public 
Credit  ”  was  passed,  many  leading  statesmen  knew  what  it 
was  calculated  and  designed  to  accomplish.  Among  these 
was  Senator  John  Sherman  of  Ohio.  Addressing  the  Senate 
on  the  27th  of  January,  1869,  just  before  the  passage  of 
the  Act  and  speaking  of  the  prospective  legislation,  he  said  : 
44  Sir,  it  is  not  possible  to  take  this  voyage  without  sore  dis¬ 
tress.  To  every  person  except  the  capitalist  out  of  debt  or 
the  salaried  officer  or  annuitant,  it  is  a  period  of  loss,  danger, 
prostration  of  trade,  fall  of  wages,  suspension  of  enterprise, 
bankruptcy,  and  disaster.  ...  It  means  the  ruin  of  all 
dealers  whose  debts  are  twice  their  capital,  though  one  third 
less  than  their  property.  It  means  the  fall  of  all  agricul¬ 
tural  productions,  without  any  very  great  reduction  of 
taxes.”  Even  so.  The  senator  was  right.  This  cold-blooded 
proposition  of  Sherman  means,  when  reduced  to  an  example, 
simply  this  :  Every  young  and  aspiring  man  in  the  United 
States,  just  beginning  life  with  wife  and  child  and  home, 
having  five  hundred  dollars  in  money  (his  pay  for  service  in 
the  army),  a  home  worth  fifteen  hundred  dollars,  and  a  debt 
of  a  thousand  dollars,  will  be  inevitably  bankrupted !  The 
calculation  of  the  senator  was  correct. 

12.  First  League  of  the  Government  with  the 
Money  Power. 

Thus  it  was  that  on  the  18th  of  March,  1869,  the  gov¬ 
ernment  of  the  United  States  made  its  first  league  and  cove¬ 
nant  with  the  fundholding  interests  against  the  people.  By 
the  terms  of  that  league  the  millionnaire  who  had  given  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  for  a  bond  of  the  same  denomina¬ 
tion  should  receive  back,  true  enough,  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars,  but  should  receive  it  in  units  of  another  kind  worth 
about  two  for  one. 

From  that  day,  distant  from  the  present  by  more  than 
twenty-seven  years,  there  has  been  no  deviation  or  shadow  of 
turning  on  the  part  of  intrenched  intrigue  to  carry  out  the 
compact.  Year  by  year  the  bolts  and  bars  have  been  driven 
ever  further  and  deeper  with  blow  on  blow  of  the  sledge  of 


18 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


the  money  power,  until  the  national  fraud  has  been  glorified 
under  the  name  of  honor,  and  the  wholesome  truth  nailed  in 
the  coffin  of  contempt.  Each  succeeding  administration  has 
been  even  as  its  predecessor,  but  more  so  in  its  devotion  to 
the  bondholding  interest  at  the  expense  of  all  besides. 

The  fact  that  the  interest  on  the  five-twenty  bonds  was,  by 
specification  payable  in  coin,  shows  conclusively  that  the  body 
of  the  bond  was  payable  in  the  lawful  money  of  the  country. 
Else  why  the  specification  as  to  how  the  interest  should  be 
paid?  If  the  body  of  the  bonds  were  payable  in  coin,  it  had 
been  the  sublimated  absurdity  of  the  century  to  specify  that 
the  coupons  should  be  paid  in  com  also.  What  kind  of  bond 
would  that  have  been  the  principal  of  which  was  payable  in 
coin  and  the  coupons  in  legal  tender?  And  beside  the  rea¬ 
son  and  very  nature  of  the  thing,  authority  abounds  to  show 
that  the  five-twenties  were  by  the  sense  and  intent  of  the 
contract  payable  in  the  lawful  money  of  the  country.  John 
Sherman  himself  is  one  of  the  witnesses  of  the  general 
understanding,  which  was  the  only  understanding  consistent 
with  truth  and  common  sense.  In  a  letter  to  Hon.  A.  Mann 
of  Brooklyn,  New  York,  written  on  the  20th  of  March,  1868, 
Senator  Sherman  said : 

44  Dear  Sir  :  I  was  pleased  to  receive  your  letter.  My  per¬ 
sonal  interests  are  the  same  as  yours,  but,  like  you,  I  do  not 
intend  to  be  influenced  by  them.  My  construction  of  the 
law  is  the  result  of  careful  examination,  and  I  feel  quite  sure 
that  an  impartial  court  would  confirm  it  if  the  case  could  be 
tried  before  a  court.  I  send  you  my  views  as  fully  stated  in 
a  speech.  Your  idea  is  that  we  propose  to  repudiate  or  vio¬ 
late  a  promise  Avhen  we  offer  to  redeem  the  principal  in  legal 
tender. 

44 1  think  the  bondholder  violates  his  promise  when  he  re¬ 
fuses  to  take  the  same  kind  of  money  he  pays  for  the  bonds. 
If  the  case  is  to  be  tested  by  law,  I  am  right.  If  it  is  to  be 
tested  by  Jay  Cooke’s  advertisement,  I  am  wrong.  I  hate 
repudiation  or  anything  like  it ;  but  we  ought  not  to  be  de¬ 
terred  from  doing  what  is  right  by  the  fear  of  undeserved 
epithets.  If  under  the  law  as  it  stands  the  holders  of  the 
five-twenties  can  only  be  paid  in  gold,  then  we  are  repudiators 
if  we  propose  to  pay  otherwise.  If  the  bondholder  can 
legally  demand  only  the  kind  of  money  he  paid,  then  he  is  a 
repudiator  and  extortioner  to  demand  money  more  valuable 
than  he  gave.  Yours  truly, 

“John  Sherman.” 


THE}  BUSINESS  OF  REFUNDING  BEGINS. 


19 


Haying  by  the  Act  of  1869  secured  the  declaration  of  the 
payment  of  the  national  debt  in  a  currency  different  from  the 
currency  of  the  contract,  the  next  step  was  that  of  lengthen¬ 
ing  and  perpetuating  the  bonds.  If  the  bonds,  now  payable 
in  coin,  were  good  for  ten  years  or  twenty  years,  then  they 
would  be  better  for  thirty  years  or  forty  years  to  run.  Nor 
will  the  government  now  be  so  eager  to  pay  when  payment  in 
coin  is  impossible.  The  people  can  now  be  made  to  believe, 
what  is  true,  that  the  government  cannot  for  the  present  pay 
our  bonds.  They  must  therefore  be  extended.  Great  finan¬ 
ciers  will  they  be  who  can  sell  us  a  five  per  cent  bond  with 
an  extension  of  ten  years,  and  take  up  a  six  per  cent  bond 
which  is  falling  due.  That  is  the  process  of  refunding  in  a 
nutshell,  and  that  requires  the  gigantic  intellect  of  some 
great  secretary  to  do  it!  We,  the  beneficiaries,  may  hold  out 
to  him  the  impossible  prospect  of  being  president — if  he  will 
do  the  work  well. 

18.  The  Business  of  Refunding  Begins. 

The  history  of  the  various  refunding  operations  by  which 
the  short,  high-rate  bonds  of  the  government  sold  during  the’ 
war  period  were  translated  into  long,  lower-rate  bonds,  is  but 
the  record  of  a  scheme  which  was  contrived  by  the  bond¬ 
holders  themselves,  ratified  by  an  undiscerning  Congress,  and 
carried  into  execution  by  the  treasury  department  of  the 
United  States,  with  the  ulterior  design  of  preventing  pay¬ 
ment  by  lengthening  the  time  to  run,  and  with  the  still  fur¬ 
ther  hope  of  making  a  perpetual  interest-bearing  fund  in  the 
European  manner. 

The  first  measure  passed  by  Congress  with  this  intent  was 
the  Act  of  July  14, 1870,  entitled  “An  Act  to  Authorize  the 
Refunding  of  the  National  Debt.”  This  act  reaffirmed  the 
proposition  that  all  the  bonds  of  the  United  States  were  re¬ 
deemable,  both  principal  and  interest,  in  coin  and  authorized 
the  secretary  of  the  treasury,  as  such  bonds,  series  after 
series,  should  fall  due  —  that  is,  reach  the  date  at  which  the 
government  had  the  option  of  redeeming  them  —  to  prepare 
and  sell  new  bonds,  extending  the  time  to  run  and  lowering 
the  nominal  rate  of  interest.  Under  this  act  the  process  of 
refunding  was  carried  on  by  those  interested  in  it  as  actively 
and  earnestly  as  though  it  were  a  manufacturing  industry, 
until  all  the  bonds  were  extended  and  most  were  made  as 
long  as  the  current  lives  of  men.  Then  the  work  abated, 
partly  because  of  the  weakness  of  all  posthumous  induce- 


20 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


ments,  and  partly  because  by  this  time  certain  symptoms  of 
alarm  and  jealousy  were  noted  among  the  people. 

As  much  as  two  years  before  the  passage  of  this  Refund¬ 
ing  Act,  the  people  began  to  show  signs  of  distrust  at  the 
manoeuvres  of  the  fundholding  classes.  The  popular  suspi¬ 
cion  was  manifested  in  the  declarations  of  the  political  plat¬ 
forms  of  both  parties,  in  1868,  in  the  greater  part  of  the 
country.  The  sentiment  of  the  people,  always  true,  even 
when  overborne  by  their  masters,  was  overwhelmingly  in  favor 
of  the  honest  payment  of  the  five-twenty  bonds;  that  is,  in 
favor  of  paying  them  in  the  same  currency  with  which  they 
were  purchased.  That  currency  had  already  appreciated  in 
its  purchasing  power  about  thirty  per  cent.  In  the  central 
United  States  the  Republican  platforms  in  the  year  just 
named  were  generally  unequivocal  in  indorsement  of  the 
proposition  to  pay  the  five-twenties  in  the  legal-tender  money 
of  the  country.  In  the  writer’s  own  State  in  that  year,  the 
platform  written  and  reported  by  the  veteran  Republican 
platform  maker,  Hon.  Richard  W.  Thompson,  afterward 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  in  the  cabinet  of  President  Hayes, 
was  as  follows :  “  The  public  debt  made  necessary  by  the 
Rebellion  should  be  honestly  paid ;  and  all  bonds  issued  there¬ 
for  should  be  paid  in  legal  tenders,  commonly  called  green¬ 
backs,  except  where,  by  their  express  terms,  they  provide 
otherwise.”  On  this  platform  Senator  Oliver  P.  Morton,  of 
great  fame  and  equal  honesty,  carried  the  State  by  a  heavy 
majority  for  himself  and  General  Grant,  in  the  fall  of  1868. 
Within  six  months  from  that  time,  however,  he  yielded  or 
was  conquered  —  and  in  yielding  lost  the  ambition  of  his 
life.  The  titanic  knees  of  that  great  and  resolute  man,  little 
acquainted  with  the  common  use  of  pregnant  hinges,  were 
broken,  not,  as  the  people  supposed,  by  paralysis,  but  by  the 
bludgeon  of  the  money  power. 

The  national  bonds  had  by  this  time  become  the  most 
profitable  of  all  investments.  Of  all  the  forms  of  property, 
they  were  the  most  exempt  from  hazard,  most  convenient, 
and  most  strongly  fortified  by  law.  They  offered  them¬ 
selves,  however,  only  to  the  surplus  accumulations  of  capital. 
The  man  of  moderate  means  must  needs  employ  his  whole 
resources  in  the  business  to  which  he  devotes  his  energies. 
When  capital  accumulates  in  large  amounts,  and  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  national  bond  in  which  it  may  ensconce 
itself  and  begin  to  grow,  such  capital  must  of  necessity  offer 
itself  for  the  promotion  of  legitimate,  productive,  manufac- 


CONCEPTION  AND  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  GREAT  CRIME.  21 

turing  and  commercial  enterprises.  It  must  under  such  con¬ 
ditions  do  something  useful  for  mankind  ;  but  where  the  bond 
exists,  surplus  capital  takes  the  form  of  the  bond  by  prefer¬ 
ence  of  all  other  enterprises,  and  to  that  extent,  all  other 
enterprises  languish  and  weaken  for  their  wonted  stimulus. 

14.  Conception  and  Evolution  of  the  Great  Crime. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  decade  thus  much  had 
been  accomplished :  The  fundholding  interest  had  confirmed 
itself  to  the  extent  of  getting  a  long  bond  for  a  short  one, 
with  the  guarantee  of  payment  of  both  principal  and  interest 
in  coin.  The  next  point  attained  by  the  bondholding  power 
—  for  it  had  now  become  a  power  —  can  hardly  be  touched 
upon  with  equanimity.  The  coin  of  the  United  States 
existed  in  two  kinds ,  silver  and  gold.  Should  the  govern¬ 
ment  ever  again  reach  the  basis  of  specie  pa}^ments,  the 
debtor  would  have  the  option  of  paying  in  the  one  coin  or 
the  other,  according  to  his  convenience  and  the  plentifulness 
of  the  given  kind.  This  option  constitutes  the  essential  ele¬ 
ment  of  bimetallism.  That  it  could  be  taken  away  from  the 
debtor  seems  in  the  retrospect  a  thing  so  monstrous  as  to  be 
incredible.  It  was  a  valuable  option  which  the  debtor  in  the 
United  States  had  held  unchallenged  from  the  foundation  of 
the  government.  No  creditor  had  ever  tried  to  take  it  from 
him.  It  had  never  been  denied  or  questioned  by  any.  It 
had  always  been  cheerfully  conceded  down  to  the  time  of 
the  Civil  War,  when  an  unforeseen  condition  removed  all  coin 
and  put  the  country,  as  we  have  seen,  on  the  basis  of  a  legal- 
tender  paper  money. 

Now  that  coin  was  again  in  sight,  or  was  supposed  to  be 
coming  in  sight ;  now  that  the  government  had  declared  its 
purpose  to  pay  the  national  debt  in  coin,  though  that  debt 
had  been  contracted  on  a  basis  of  paper,  it  might  reasonably 
have  been  supposed  that  the  bondholding  interest  would  be 
contented  with  that  enormous  concession,  and  being  thus 
glutted  to  repletion,  would  seek  no  further  extortion  from 
the  American  people.  But,  on  the  contrary,  the  monstrous 
scheme  was  conceived  of  destroying  the  option  of  the  debtor 
to  pay  in  silver,  by  destroying  the  coin  unit  of  that  metal, 
thus  reducing  the  debtor  —  all  debtors,  including  the 
government  of  the  United  States  —  to  the  necessity  of  pay¬ 
ing  in  gold  only. 

This  scheme  was  not  only  conceived,  but  was  contemplated 
with  equanimity,  not  indeed  b}^  the  people,  but  by  those 


22 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


whose  interests  were  so  profoundly  concerned.  In  the  last 
session  of  the  Forty-second  Congress,  the  question  was  insin¬ 
uated  into  legislation,  but  was  housed  from  the  public  with 
a  skill  worthy  of  the  noblest  cause.  It  was  already  the  plan 
of  the  conspirators  to  -have  an  act  passed  by  Congress  as 
soon  as  possible,  declaring  a  date  at  which  specie  payments 
should  be  resumed  in  the  United  States.  But  preliminary 
to  such  declaration  and  as  an  antecedent  thereof,  it  was 
seen  to  be  advantageous  to  tamper  the  coin  dollar  in  which 
payment  was  to  be  resumed. 

For  the  time  being  and  for  some  years  to  come  —  so  ran 
the  bondholders’  dream  in  1873 — the  government  of  the 
United  States  and  the  people  alike  must  continue  to  prose¬ 
cute  their  business  on  the  basis  of  the  paper  legal  tender ; 
but  in  the  future,  as  we,  the  financiers,  clearly  perceive, 
another  dollar,  that  is,  a  metallic  dollar,  is  to  be  substituted 
for  this  legal  tender  of  paper ;  and  it  is  to  our  interest  to 
have  that  other  dollar  as  valuable  as  possible.  We  will  not 
only  go  to  the  length  of  substituting  a  metallic  dollar  still 
worth  a  premium  of  from  thirty  to  fifty  per  cent  for  the  cur¬ 
rent  dollar  of  the  country,  but  we  will  go  further  than  that, 
and  tamper  with  the  metallic  dollar  itself,  so  that  that  also 
may  ultimately,  in  some  twenty  years,  be  worth  two  for  one  ! 
We  will  take  away,  if  we  can,  by  some  process,  the  optional 
dollar  now  constitutional  for  eighty-one  years  in  the  United 
States,  and  will  place  in  its  stead  a  dollar  in  one  metal  only 
—  a  metal  that  we  know,  from  its  scarcity  and  from  our 
ability  to  corner  it  in  the  markets  of  the  world,  must  rapidly, 
under  such  conditions,  appreciate  in  its  purchasing  power,  all 
the  time  hiding  its  own  fallacy,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
discarded  metal,  being  disparaged  and  abolished,  must  lose 
its  quality  as  primary  money,  and  be  driven  gradually  into 
the  relation  of  subsidiary  coin  and  mere  merchandise. 

Words  are  inadequate  to  describe  the  profundity  and 
criminality  of  this  scheme.  It  Avas  carried  into  effect  by  the 
Act  of  Feb.  12,  1873.  It  was  done  by  a  turn  of  Shy- 
lock’s  Avrist,  so  adroit  and  one  might  say  devilish,  as  to  be 
indescribable  in  the  phraseology  of  this  Avorld.  It  was  an 
act  on  which  no  king  of  the  seventeenth  century  Avould  have 
ventured  Avithout  incurring  the  risk  of  revolution.  It  was 
an  act  Avhich,  instead  of  being  misrepresented  by  those  Avho 
have  found  it  out  and  nailed  it  to  the  gibbet  of  public  con¬ 
tempt,  has  neAer  been  adequately  denounced.  It  Avas  an  act 
Avhich  has  posithely  blackened  the  honor  of  the  American 


% 


WHAT  DTD  THEY  DO  IT  FOR  ? 


23 


republic.  It  was  an  act  which  though  subsequently 
defended,  even  to  the  present  day,  by  the  ingenuity  of  great 
men  and  by  all  the  purchasable  ability  of  the  world,  is  never¬ 
theless  condemned  by  the  conscience  and  common  sense  of 
mankind  as  the  most  cold-blooded,  unjust,  uncalled-for, 
unmitigated,  and  damnable  outrage  ever  done  in  this  century 
to  the  rights  and  interests  of  a  great  people. 

Already  in  Europe  the  nefarious  work  had  been  begun. 
The  bimetallic  system  of  currency  in  use  in  the  states  of  the 
Latin  Union  had  been  sapped  and  mined  and  the  free  coin¬ 
age  of  silver  in  those  states  suspended  before  the  like  result 
was  reached  in  America.  But  the  intrigue  involving  both 
Europe  and  America  was  on,  and  the  managers  in  the  United 
States  went  carefully  forward  to  success. 

15.  What  did  They  Do  It  For? 

What  did  they  do  it  for?  that  is  the  question.  The  men 
who  engineered  the  Act  of  February  12,  1873,  from  which 
such  disastrous  consequences  have  floAved,  had  some  motive 
in  view.  What  was  it?  The  scheme  did  not  engender 
itself,  but  was  contrived  with  some  end  in  view.  Nobody 
demanded  or  expected  or  imagined  the  possibility  of  the  pas¬ 
sage  of  such  a  measure  as  the  demonetization  of  silver.  To 
say  that  the  managers  had  no  end  in  view  is  to  say  what  the 
American  people  do  not  believe  and  what  history  —  being 
rational  —  will  not  record. 

As  to  the  bottom  motive,  then,  of  this  Act  of  1873,  let  it 
be  written  in  black.  The  promoters  of  the  iniquitous  meas¬ 
ure  have  seen  fit  to  complain  of  the  estimate  in  which  their 
work  is  held  by  the  American  people.  They  complain  that 
they  themselves  are  harshly  and  unjustly  judged.  They 
complain  that  millions  of  men  who  have  lost  their  homes  and 
had  their  prospects  in  life  blasted  by  the  Act  of  1873  persist 
in  calling  it  a  crime.  They  try  to  laugh  it  away  by  repeat¬ 
ing  in  mockery  the  words  with  which  the  infamous  measure 
is  stigmatized  by  the  roused-up  nation. 

But  why  do  they  complain  and  wince  ?  It  is  because  the 
act  of  which  they  are  the  authors  cannot  be  explained  away 
by  any  reasonable  or  even  plausible  hypothesis  of  honesty 
and  good  faith  on  the  part  of  its  inventors.  There  is  no 
interpretation  of  the  thing  done  that  Avill  satisfy  the  common 
sense  of  the  American  people.  What  reason  or  motive  or 
explanation  can  the  authors  of  that  act  ever  make  as  an 
apology  to  the  world  ?  They  have  had  twenty-three  years 


24 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


in  which  to  find  or  invent  an  answer ;  but  no  studied  reflec¬ 
tion  or  ingenious  afterthought  has  been  able  to  suggest  a 
plausible,  to  say  nothing  of  an  honest,  motive  for  the  act  of 
1873.  What  did  they  do  it  for?  That  is  the  question 
which  they  must  answer. 

Here  lies  the  world  weltering  in  industrial  and  commer¬ 
cial  ruin.  Here  are  the  sorrows  of  a  great  nation  unas¬ 
suaged.  Here  is  tremendous  America  prostrate  under  the 
invented  and  purposed  curse  of  men.  What  have  the 
authors  and  inventors  of  the  curse  to  say  in  justification  of 
their  deed  ?  Virtually  nothing.  They  say  that  the  demone¬ 
tization  of  silver  was  not  a  crime.  They  say  it  was  innocent. 
They  say  it  was  not  demonetization  at  all,  but  only  a  little 
amendment  of  the  coinage.  They  say  that  the  act  was  only 
incidental  —  a  sort  of  half-playful  circumstance  of  patriotic 
legislation,  harmless  in  its  conception  and  pure  in  delivery. 
They  say  that  the  measure  was  understood,  that  it  was 
debated,  that  it  was  sent  back  to  committee  and  born  again, 
that  some  men  voted  for  it  and  others  against  it.  They  say 
every  irrelevant  and  inconsequential  thing  imaginable  about 
the  Act  of  1873,  but  they  avoid  the  one  essential  question, 
and  that  is,  What  was  the  bottom  reason  or  motive  for  such  l eg- 
islaftion ?  What  did  they  do  it  for?  They  say,* not  for  this 
and  not  for  that.  Well,  then,  what  for? 

The  truth  is  that  the  authors  and  promoters  of  the  act  of 
demonetization  can  offer  no  explanation  or  reason  for  it 
except  an  explanation  that  does  not  explain  or  a  reason  which 
admits  the  crime.  The  real  motive  of  that  act  was  the 
ulterior  purpose,  the  covert  design,  of  destroying  one  half  of 
the  primary  money  of  the  world.  It  was  a  project  filmed 
over  with  intrigue  to  reduce  silver,  the  old-time  money  of 
mankind,  from  its  place  as  a  precious  metal  to  common  mer¬ 
chandise.  The  gold-producing  nations  were  in  the  scheme, 
and  America  was  hoodwinked.  The  authors  of  the  measure 
planned  to  destroy  one  half  of  the  money  resource  of  the 
world,  and  thus  to  double  the  purchasing  power  of  the  other 
half.  The  intrigue  was  to  put  upon  gold  the  entire  monetary 
office ;  to  change  every  contract  in  the  United  States ;  to  make 
every  debt  worth  twice  its  face,  and  to  divide  by  two  the 
resources  and  strength  of  every  workingman  under  the  circle  of 
the  sun.  It  was  a  far-reaching  and  profound  scheme  to  halve 
the  price  of  every  gift  of  nature  and  every  product  of 
human  industry  in  the  world  and  to  compel  the  payment  of 
every  debt  with  a  measure  of  two  for  one. 


THE  CRIME  WAS  KNOWN,  ETC. 


25 


The  real  authors  of  this  scheme  understood  it  perfectly 
well.  They  knew  what  they  were  about  with  their  44  harm¬ 
less  accident  of  legislation  !  ”  But  Congress  as  a  body  did 
not  know  the  thing  intended ;  the  country,  the  nation,  knew 
it  not ;  and  the  President  who  signed  the  act  did  not  know 
that  he  was  signing  a  warrant  for  the  bankruptcy  of  the 
nation.  Nor  were  the  plan  and  motive  of  the  thing  done  ever 
revealed  until  it  began  to  declare  itself  in  the  industrial  and 
commercial  ruin  of  the  nation. 

16.  The  Crime  was  Known  only  to  the  Perpetra¬ 
tors. 

The  secret  history  of  the  act  of  demonetization  has  never 
been  —  and  perhaps  never  will  be  —  fully  exposed  to  the 
light  of  day.  Thus  much  is  certain,  that  when  the  bill  for 
the  revision  of  the  coinage  was  brought  into  the  House  by 
the  Hon.  William  D.  Kelley,  chairman  of  the  Committee  on 
Coinage,  Weights  and  Measures,  it  contained  a  provision  for 
the  standard  silver  dollar  as  well  as  for  the  other  coins  of  our 
system.  Thus  much  is  certain  also,  namely,  that  in  some 
manner  and  by  some  hand  that  provision  was  stricken  out ; 
and  then  the  emasculated  bill  was  in  some  way  worked 
through  both  House  and  Senate  without  the  knowledge  of 
either  body,  or  any  considerable  number  of  the  members,  as 
to  the  nature  and  intended  effect  of  the  measure  that  was 
passed.  The  President’s  signature  was  obtained  to  the  bill 
without  his  knowledge  that  thereby  silver  was  demonetized. 
Nearly  eight  months  afterwards,  namely,  on  the  6th  of  Octo¬ 
ber,  1873,  General  Grant  wrote  a  letter  to  his  friend,  Mr. 
Cowdrey,  a  bank  president  of  Brooklyn,  in  which  he  expressed 
his  surprise  that  silver  money  was  not  making  its  appearance 
as  a  means  of  aiding  in  the  resumption  of  specie  payments. 
The  general  did  not  know  that  his  own  signature  had  made  it 
impossible  that  a  single  silver  dollar  should  be  coined  for 
purposes  of  resumption  or  for  any  other  purpose  whatsoever. 
In  the  letter  to  Cow'drey  he  said : 

44  The  panic  has  brought  greenbacks  about  to  a  par  with 
silver.  I  wonder  that  silver  is  not  already  coming  into  the 
market  to  supply  the  deficiency  in  the  circulating  medium. 
When  it  does  come  —  and  I  predict  it  will  soon  —  we  will 
have  made  a  rapid  stride  towards  specie  payments.  Currency 
will  never  go  below  silver  after  that.  .  .  .  The  circulation  of 
silver  will  have  other  beneficial  effects.  .  .  .  Silver  will 
become  the  standard  of  value  and  will  be  hoarded  in  a  small 


26 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


way.  ...  I  confess  a  desire  to  see  a  limited  hoarding  of 
money.” 

On  the  10th  of  May,  1879,  William  D.  Kelley,  Father  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  speaking  indignantly  and  in 
retrospect  of  the  Act  of  1878,  said: 

“The  Committee  of  Coinage,  Weights  and  Measures,  who 
reported  the  original  bill  [Act  of  1873],  were  faithful  and 
able,  and  scanned  its  provisions  closely.  As  their  organ  I 
reported  it.  It  contained  provision  for  both  the  standard 
dollar  and  the  trade  dollar.  Never  having  heard  until  long 
after  its  enactment  of  the  substitution  in  the  Senate  of  the 
section  which  dropped  the  standard  dollar,  I  profess  to  know 
nothing  of  its  history ;  but  I  am  prepared  to  say  that  in  all 
the  legislation  of  this  country  there  is  no  mystery  equal  to 
the  demonetization  of  the  standard  silver  dollar  of  the  United 
States.  I  have  never  found  a  man  who  could  tell  just  how 
it  came  about,  or  why.” 

If  William  D.  Kelley  after  more  than  six  years  of  mingling 
with  the  foremost  men  of  the  nation  had  never  found  one  who 
could  tell  him  how  or  why  silver  was  demonetized,  what  shall 
we  say  of  those  who,  twenty-three  years  after  date,  are  trying , 
under  pressure  of  public  condemnation,  to  explain  it  —  and 
cannot  ? 

Testimony  to  prove  the  ignorance  of  Congress  with  respect 
to  the  nature  and  intent  of  the  act  of  demonetization  can  be 
adduced  to  the  extent  of  a  volume.  On  the  15th  of  Febru¬ 
ary,  1878,  Senator  Allison  of  Iowa  said  in  the  Senate: 

“  When  the  secret  history  [mark  the  secret  history !]  of 
this  bill  of  1873  comes  to  be  told  it  will  disclose  the  fact  that 
the  House  of  Representatives  intended  to  coin  both  gold  and 
silver  and  to  place  both  metals  upon  the  French  ratio  (15£ 
to  1)  instead  of  our  own,  .  .  .  but  that  the  bill  afterwards 
was  doctored.” 

On  the  same  day  when  this  was  uttered  Senator  D.  W. 
Voorhees  of  Indiana,  challenged  Senator  James  G.  Blaine, 
who  had  been  Speaker  of  the  House  when  the  act  of  demon¬ 
etization  was  passed,  as  follows  : 

“  I  want  to  ask  my  friend  from  Maine  [Mr.  Blaine] 

.  .  .  whether  I  may  call  him  as  one  more  witness  to  the  fact 
that  it  was  not  generally  known  whether  silver  was  demon¬ 
etized.  Did  he  know,  as  Speaker  of  the  House  presiding  at 
that  time,  that  the  silver  dollar  was  demonetized  in  the  bill  ?  ” 

To  this  Senator  Blaine  replied  : 

“  I  did  not  know  anything  that  was  in  the  bill  .  .  .  And 


THE  CRIME  WAS  KNOWN,  ETC. 


27 


now  I  should  like  to  exchange  questions  with  the  Senator 
from  Indiana  who  was  then  on  the  floor  [of  the  House],  and 
whose  business  it  was  far  more  than  mine  to  know  .  .  .  Did 
lie  know  ?  ” 

Senator  Voorhees  replied:  “I  very  frankly  say  that  I  did 
not.” 

General  Garfield,  afterwards  President  of  the  United 
States,  speaking  at  Springfield,  Ohio,  in  the  fall  of  1877,  said  : 

44  Perhaps  I  ought  to  be  ashamed  to  say  so,  but  it  is  the 
truth  to  say  that  I,  at  that  time  being  chairman  of  the  Com¬ 
mittee  on  Appropriations,  and  having  my  hands  over-full 
during  all  that  time  with  work,  never  read  the  bill  [Act  of 
1873].  It  was  put  through,  as  dozens  of  bills  are  ...  in 
Congress,  on  the  faith  of  the  report  of  the  chairman  of  the 
committee  ;  therefore  I  tell  you,  because  it  is  the  truth,  that 
I  have  no  knowledge  about  it.” 

This  extract  seems  to  raise  a  question  between  the  dead 
Garfield  and  the  living  Sherman. 

On  the  10th  of  January,  1878,  Senator  Beck  of  Kentucky, 
speaking  to  the  proposed  measure  of  remonetizing  silver, 
said: 

44  What  I  complain  of  is  .  .  .  that  the  House  never  knew 
what  was  in  that  bill.  .  .  .  Will  any  sane  man  believe  that  they 
[Senators]  deliberately  consented  to  strike  down  silver  coin¬ 
age  ?  Mr.  Sherman  says  they  all  did.  I  do  not  believe  him.” 

This  is  a  question  between  the  dead  Beck  and  the  living 
Sherman. 

In  this  same  debate  Senator  William  M.  Stewart,  of 
Nevada,  now  charged  with  inconsistency  and  false  motives 
by  orators  great  and  little,  said  in  a  colloquy  with  Senator 
Sherman : 

44  Whatever  may  be  your  construction  of  their  meaning 
now,  the  words  you  used  then  induced  me  to  vote  with  you, 
because  you  made  me  believe  that  you  were  sending  out  a 
bona  fide  dollar,  as  good  as  any  in  the  world.” 

The  Hon.  Wm.  S.  Holman  of  Indiana,  at  that  time  Father 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  speaking  from  his  desk,  July 
13,  1876,  said : 

44 1  have  before  me  the  record  of  the  proceedings  of  this 
House  on  the  passage  of  that  measure,  a  record  which  no 
man  can  read  without  being  convinced  that  the  measure  and 
the  method  of  its  passage  through  the  House  was  a  4  colossal 
swindle.’  I  assert  that  the  measure  never  had  the  sanction 
of  the  House,  and  does  not  possess  the  moral  force  of  law. 


28 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


...  I  myself  asked  the  question  of  Mr.  Hooper,  who  stood 
near  where  I  am  now  standing,  whether  it  changed  the  law  in 
regard  to  coinage.  And  the  answer  of  Mr.  Hooper  certainly 
left  the  impression  upon  the  whole  House  that  the  subject  of 
the  coinage  was  not  affected  by  that  bill.” 

On  the  15th  of  February,  1878,  Senator  Thurman  of  Ohio 
said : 

“  I  cannot  say  what  took  place  in  the  House,  but  know 
when  the  hill  was  pending  in  the  Senate  we  thought  it  Avas 
simply  a  hill  to  reform  the  mint,  regulate  coinage,  and  fix  up 
one  thing  and  another,  and  there  is  not  a  single  man  in  the 
Senate,  I  think,  unless  a  member  of  the  committee  from 
which  the  bill  came,  who  had  the  slightest  idea  that  it  was 
.  even  a  squint  toward  demonetization.” 

Finally,  Senator  Roscoe  Conkling  of  New  York,  speaking 
on  the  subject  on  the  30th  of  March,  1876,  said  in  indignant 
inquiry : 

“Will  the  Senator  allow  me  to  ask  him  or  some  other 
Senator  a  question  ?  Is  it  true  that  there  is  now  by  laAv 
no  American  dollar?  And  if  so,  is  it  true  that  the  effect  of 
this  bill  is  to  be  to  make  half  dollars  and  quarter  dollars  the 
only  silver  coin  which  can  be  used  as  a  legal  tender  ?  ” 

Here  the  question  is  between  the  dead  Conkling  and  the 
living  Sherman. 

The  authors  of  the  Act  of  1873  can  well  afford  to  be  con¬ 
tent.  If  they  are  condemned  by  the  judgment  and  Avhipped 
by  the  scorn  of  the  American  people  they  can  still  afford  to 
smile  ;  for  they  made  their  game  and  won  it !  For  twenty- 
three  years  they  have  Avatched  the  wreck  as  disinterested 
spectators.  Their  oavii  strong  ships  are  filled  with  the  treas¬ 
ure-trove  of  land  and  sea.  Surely  they  have  little  occasion 
to  worry  !  True,  the  floods  are  filled  with  the  wrecks  of  poor 
men’s  earnings  and  the  broken  symbols  of  hope.  The  for¬ 
tunes  of  the  humble  millions  are  in  the  sea.  The  lifeless 
bodies  of  young  husbands  are  floating  there.  Wives  and 
mothers  Avith  despairing  faces  are  clinging  to  masts  and  spars. 
I  saw  a  Avooden  cradle  Avith  two  babies  in  it  going  doAvn  the 
flood,  and  the  Avhite  fin  of  a  shark  Avas  flung  up  where  it 
sank!  O,  be  sure  the  authors  of  the  Act  of  1873  have 
nothing  to  answer  !  Why  should  they  ?  Their  only  reply  to 
the  indignant  question  of  mankind  is  a  good-natured  guffaAV 
and  some  pleasant  levity  about  the  terrors  of  the  Mexican 
dollar ! 


TRUE  HISTORY  OF  OUR  COINAGE. 


29 


17.  True  History  of  our  Coinage. 

The  Act  of  1873  abolished  the  standard  unit  of  money  and 
account  in  the  United  States.  Until  that  time  all  other  coins 
in  use  under  our  constitution  and  statute  had  been  made  to 
do  obeisance  to  the  silver  dollar  as  the  unit  of  money  and 
account.  That  dollar  had  never  been  altered  by  the  fraction 
of  one  grain  in  the  quantity  of  pure  metal  composing  it, 
from  the  time  when  it  was  ordained  in  1792  to  the  time  when 
it  was  abolished  from  the  list  of  coins  to  be  henceforth  struck 
at  the  mints  of  the  United  States.  Every  other  coin  whether 
of  gold  or  silver  had  been  altered  and  altered  again ;  the  sil¬ 
ver  unit  never.  To  that  unit  all  the  rest,  both  gold  and 
silver,  had  from  the  first  been  conformed.  The  eagle  of  the 
original  statute  and  of  all  subsequent  statutes  was  not  made 
to  be  ten  dollars,  but  to  be  of  the  value  of  ten  dollars.  The 
half  eagle  was  not  made  to  be  five  dollars,  but  to  be  of  the 
value  of  five  dollars.  The  quarter  eagle  was  of  the  value  of 
two  and  a  half  dollars,  and  the  subsequent  double  eagle  was 
of  the  value  of  twenty  dollars.  Even  the  gold  dollar  of  1849, 
marvellous  to  say,  was  not  a  dollar,  but  was  made  to  be  of 
the  value  of  a  dollar.  The  subsidiary  coins  were  all  fractions 
of  the  dollar,  and  the  dollar  was  of  silver  only. 

In  a  recently  published  book  called  “  A  Coin  Catechism,” 
by  J.  K.  Upton,  three  times  assistant  secretary  of  the  treasury 
and  financial  statistician  of  the  Eleventh  Census,  the  follow¬ 
ing  remarkable  interpretation  of  the  Coinage  Act  of  April  2, 
1792,  is  given:  “The  first  Congress  of  the  United  States 
provided  for  the  coinage  of  4  silver  dollars  or  units,  each  to  be 
of  the  value  of  a  Spanish  milled  dollar  as  the  same  is  now 
current,  and  to  contain  371.25  grains  of  pure  silver,’  and 
fractional  pieces  of  the  same  fineness  and  proportional  weight, 
and  gold  pieces  to  contain  24-75  grains  of  pure  gold,  to  a  dol¬ 
lar  etc. 

The  last  clause  of  this  exposition  by  Mr.  Upton  is  so 
cunningly  false  as  to  be  amusing.  It  is  a  logical  and  liter¬ 
ary  curiosity  that  ought  to  be  remanded  to  the  text-books  as 
the  finest  existing  example  of  sophism.  Why  did  not  the 
author  go  on  with  his  quotation  from  the  statute  of  1792  and 
give  the  clause  relative  to  the  coinage  of  gold?  He  knew 
that  to  do  so  would  be  ruinous  to  the  special  plea  which  he 
was  making.  The  first  Congress  of  the  United  States  did 
not  provide  for  any  such  coinage  of  gold  as  that  described  by 
Mr.  Upton.  Mr.  Upton  either  knows  it  or  else  he  does  not 


30 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


know  it.  The  44  gold  pieces  ”  to  which  he  refers  in  his  care¬ 
fully  covered  expression  were  precisely  as  given  in  the  text 
above  ;  namely,  an  eagle,  a  half  eagle,  and  a  quarter  eagle, 
and  afterwards  a  double  eagle,  and  the  coins  each  and  several 
are  defined  in  the  statute  as  being  of  the  value  of  so  many 
dollars,  or  units,  and  the  dollar,  or  unit,  is  defined  as  being 
371.25  grains  of  pure  silver. 

The  conformity  of  gold  to  silver  by  the  same  statute  at  15 
to  1  made  the  gold  coins  to  be  multiples  of  24.75  grains  of 
gold,  a  proportion  which  was  afterwards  twice  altered  to  pre¬ 
serve  the  conformity.  This  simply  showed  the  amount  of 
gold  which  at  the  time  should  be,  not  a  dollar,  but  of  the 
value  of  a  dollar.  Senator  Sherman  says  in  a  published  note 
relative  to  Upton’s  book  :  44  His  statements  on  financial  mat¬ 
ters  may  he  implicitly  relied  on”  Of  course.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  Mr.  Upton’s  whole  book  is  tainted  with  the  same 
species  of  false  interpretation  shown  in  the  quotation  given 
above.  From  one  example  judge  the  whole.  Thus  from  the 
beginning  of  our  national  history  was  the  American  silver 
dollar  the  sole  statutory  and  constitutional  unit  of  money 
and  account. 

Not  a  single  dictionary  or  cyclopaedia  in  the  English  lan¬ 
guage  before  the  year  1878  ever,  to  our  knowledge,  defined 
44  dollar  ”  in  any  terms  other  than  of  silver.  In  that  year 
the  administrators  of  the  estate  of  Noah  Webster,  deceased, 
cut  the  plates  of  our  standard  lexicon  and  inserted  a  new  defi¬ 
nition  that  had  become  necessary  in  order  to  make  the  bond 
intrigue,  in  Congress  and  out  of  it,  consist. 

True  it  is  that  by  the  statute  of  1792  the  dollar  was  made 
to  exist  in  the  gold  coin  also ;  but  that  dollar  was  a  dollar 
only  by  its  conformity  in  value  to  the  silver  coin  which  was 
the  one  standard  unit  of  money  and  account.  Our  metal 
money  existed  in  both  kinds,  and  the  system  was  bimetallic 
to  this  extent,  that  the  debtor  might  pay  in  either ;  but  the 
unit  existed  in  silver  only.  To  abolish  that  unit,  to  strike  it 
down,  to  cancel  it,  and  to  substitute  another  therefor,  ivas  a 
crime.  It  has  been  rightly  so  branded  by  the  American  peo¬ 
ple,  and  it  will  be  so  written  in  history.  It  makes  no  differ¬ 
ence  whether  it  was  done  secretly  or  openly,  whether  in  the 
day  or  in  the  night ;  whether  by  a  committee  or  by  the  House 
in  full  debate ;  whether  Congress  understood  it  or  did  not 
understand  it.  It  was  a  crime  all  the  same  against  the 
rights  and  interests  of  the  American  people ;  aye,  against  the 
American  people  themselves  and  against  all  the  people  of 


RESUMPTION  OF  SPECIE  PAYMENTS. 


31 


the  world;  for  it  was  done  against  justice,  against  truth, 
against  the  law  of  both  man  and  God.  Nevertheless  it 
was  done. 

18.  Conditions  of  the  Resumption  of  Specie  Pay¬ 
ments. 

Again  the  bondholding  interest  had  played  a  great  game 
with  the  American  people,  and  had  won  as  before.  The  next 
event  of  the  programme  was  already  rising  above  the  hori¬ 
zon.  That  was  the  formal  declaration  of  a  date  when  the 
gold  dollar  instead  of  the  alternative  bimetallic  dollar  of  the 
contract  made  by  the  Ameiican  people  with  the  bondholders 
should  begin  to  be  paid  in  discharge  of  the  debts  of  the 
nation.  The  act  fixing  that  date  was  passed  on  the  14th  of 
January,  1875,  and  the  1st  of  January,  1879,  was  named  as 
the  day  when  specie  payments  should  be  resumed  at  the 
treasury  of  the  United  States,  and  if  there,  then  everywhere. 

In  the  interim,  about  the  year  1877,  the  American  people 
made  a  discovery  —  not  a  pleasing  discovery.  They  found 
that  they  were  ginned  in  a  trap  which  had  been  set  for  them 
without  their  knowledge  four  years  previously.  The  date 
for  the  resumption  of  specie  payments  was  near  at  hand.  The 
means  for  such  resumption  had  to  be  provided.  The  national 
treasury  could  not  resume  on  nothing,  but  must  be  supplied 
in  advance  with  the  coin  necessary  for  such  an  enormous 
transaction  and  for  keeping  up  the  work  when  it  should  be 
once  begun.  The  people  had  been  supposing  that  both  gold 
and  silver  would  be  gathered  without  discrimination  for  the 
discharge  of  the  debts  of  the  government.  To  their  amaze¬ 
ment  they  found  that  they  had  been  beaten  by  a  game.  Not 
a  silver  dollar  was  coining  or  could  be  legally  coined  at  the 
mints  to  meet  the  coming  emergency. 

Only  a  few  years  before  the  enormous  treasures  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  had  been  laid  bare.  The  discovery  of  new 
deposits  of  silver  and  gold  at  this  juncture  seemed  providen¬ 
tial.  The  patriot  Lincoln  heard  of  it  with  delight.  On  the 
afternoon  before  the  assassination,  when  Vice-President 
Schuyler  Colfax  was  on  the  eve  of  departing  for  the  West  to 
examine  into  the  conditions  and  prospects  of  the  proposed 
Pacific  Railway,  the  President  said  to  him,  measuring  his 
words  :  “  Mr.  Colfax,  I  want  you  to  take  a  message  from  me 
to  the  miners  whom  you  visit.  I  have  very  large  ideas  of  the 
mineral  wealth  of  our  nation.  .  .  .  Now  that  the  Rebellion  is 
overthrown,  and  we  know  pretty  nearly  the  amount  of  our 


32 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


national  debt,  the  more  gold  and  silver  we  mine  makes  the 
payment  of  that  debt  so  much  the  easier.  Now  I  am  going  to 
encourage  that  in  every  possible  way.  [Even  so,  O  Lincoln.] 
We  shall  have  hundreds  of  thousands  of  disbanded  soldiers, 
and  many  have  feared  that  their  return  home  in  such  great 
numbers  might  paralyze  industry  by  furnishing  suddenly  a 
greater  supply  of  labor  than  there  will  be  a  demand  for.  I 
am  going  to  try  and  attract  them  to  the  hidden  wealth  of  our 
mountain  ranges  where  there  is  room  enough  for  all.  Immi¬ 
gration,  which  even  the  war  has  not  stopped,  will  land  upon 
our  shores  hundreds  of  thousands  more  per  year  from  over¬ 
crowded  Europe.  I  intend  to  point  them  to  the  gold  and 
silver  that  waits  for  them  in  the  West.  Tell  the  miners  from 
me  that  I  shall  promote  their  interests  to  the  utmost  of  my 
ability,  because  their  prosperity  is  the  prosperity  of  the  nation; 
and  we  shall  prove  in  a  very  few  years  that  we  are  the  treas¬ 
ury  of  the  world”  These  are  the  last  glorious  words  of  Lin¬ 
coln.  O  thou  immortal !  In  thy  stanch  and  capacious 
heart  there  was  a  place  even  for  the  miners  and  the  mining 
interests  of  our  country.  Thy  last  thoughts  of  public  con¬ 
cern  in  this  world  were  how  the  war  debt  was  about  to  be 
paid  with  the  gold  and  silver  of  the  mountains. 

It  were  hard  to  say  whether  there  was  greater  cause  of 
amazement  or  rage  when  the  people  found  that  the  very 
resource  to  which  Lincoln  had  pointed  in  his  last  public 
utterance  as  the  means  of  paying  the  war  debt  had  been 
purposely  cut  off.  When  the  reason  of  this  was  inquired, 
Shylock  pointed  his  benevolent  finger  to  the  Act  of  1873.  It 
was  unlawful  to  coin  silver  dollars.  The  debt  must  be  paid 
in  gold.  When  the  inquiry  was  pressed  as  to  whether  the 
silver  dollar  had  not  always  been  the  dollar  of  the  constitu¬ 
tion  and  the  statute,  whether  it  had  not  been  in  particular 
the  dollar  of  primary  money  when  the  bonded  debt  was 
incurred,  Shylock  shuffled  and  lied  and  made  an  affidavit 
that  he  was  an  honest  man. 

19.  The  Act  for  Remonetizing  Silver. 

Hereupon  a  clamor  —  first  of  many  —  arose  in  the  country. 
The  people  broke  into  insurrection  against  the  money  power. 
There  was  a  wrestle  between  them  and  their  oppressors. 
For  the  time  being  their  representatives  in  Congress,  less 
swayed  than  afterward  by  the  tremendous  influences  around 
them,  stood  fast  for  truth  and  right.  A  battle  was  fought  in 
the  second  session  of  the  Forty-fifth  Congress,  and  on  the  21st 


THE  ACT  FOR  REMONETIZING  SILVER. 


83 


of  February,  1878,  the  act  was  triumphantly  passed  for  the 
restoration  of  the  silver  dollar  and  for  the  compulsory  coinage 
of  that  unit  at  the  minimum  rate  of  two  millions  of  dollars  a 
month. 

We  need  not  here  recount  how  the  act  of  remonetization 
was  sent  to  the  President  of  the  United  States  to  meet  at  his 
hands  the  puny  rebuff  of  a  veto.  Nor  need  we  refer  to  the 
other  fact  that  the  veto  itself  was  buried,  without  a  word  of 
debate,  under  a  majority  of  46  to  19  in  the  Senate,  and  of 
196  to  73  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  So  perish  all 
similar  documents  evermore ! 

It  was  by  means  of  the  Act  of  1878  that  the  government 
of  the  United  States  was  enabled  to  make  good  its  declaration 
of  specie  payments  at  the  appointed  time.  Within  eleven 
months  the  ordeal  came  and  was  passed.  The  premium  on 
gold  was  obliterated.  Both  money  metals  stood  side  by  side 
in  the  accomplishment  of  this  work.  The  first  metallic 
money  that  reappeared  in  the  channels  of  ordinary  trade  was 
the  old  silver  dollar,  restored,  not  indeed  to  its  unlimited  and 
equal  rank,  but  to  a  measure  of  efficiency. 

The  act  of  remonetization  was  in  force  for  twelve  years 
and  five  months.  In  this  period  at  the  mints  of  the  United 
States  were  coined  more  than  four  hundred  million  silver 
dollars.  These  were  added  to  the  volume  of  the  currency,  in 
spite  of  the  grimaces  and  gripings  of  Shylock.  It  was  the 
people’s  primary  money. 

The  law  of  1878  was  very  far  short  of  perfection.  It  left  sil¬ 
ver  exposed  to  the  intrigues  of  the  enemy,  and  placed  gold 
in  such  a  situation  that  the  price  of  it  might  be  gradually 
advanced  at  the  option  of  the  holders.  It  made  silver  to  be 
merchandise,  coinable  into  dollars  that  were  to  be  buoyed  up 
by  coinage  from  the  bullion  value  which  the  Goldites  might 
measure  in  terms  of  gold,  and  depress  as  much  as  they 
pleased.  This  actually  occurred.  Gold  began  steadily  to 
appreciate.  Its  purchasing  power,  as  measured  by  the  aver¬ 
age  of  all  other  commodities,  rose  higher  and  higher.  The 
supposition  that  the  average  of  all  other  commodities  declined 
in  value  is  absurd.  They  only  declined  in  price  —  price  as 
measured  by  gold.  Gold  as  measured  by  silver  advanced  in 
price  and  purchasing  power.  The  price  of  silver  bullion 
declined,  or  was  forced  down  by  the  standard  of  gold ;  but 
the  value  of  silver — raw  silver — did  NOT  decline  more 
rapidly  than  the  average  of  the  great  products  of  America 
and  Europe  ;  that  is,  it  did  not  decline  at  all. 


34 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


The  whole  situation  was  so  contrived  as  to  produce  a  diver¬ 
gency,  a  disparity,  in  the  bullion  values  of  silver  and  gold ; 
but  gold  was  able  to  conceal  its  fallacy,  just  as  any  other 
metal,  from  iron  to  iridium,  would  conceal  its  fallacy  if  it 
were  the  sole  standard  of  values.  So  much  gold,  namely, 
23.22  grains,  was  stamped  as  the  standard  dollar,  and  if  the 
treacherous  metal  had  risen  until  its  purchasing  power  was 
five  hundred  per  cent  of  what  it  had  been  previously,  until 
one  unit  of  it  would  purchase  a  thousand  bushels  of  wheat 
or  fifty  acres  of  farming  land,  it  would  not  have  revealed  the 
lie  that  was  in  it !  It  would  still  have  been  “  the  honest 
dollar !  ”  As  matter  of  fact,  gold  bullion  rose  higher  and 
higher,  and  all  things  else,  including  silver  bullion,  were 
correspondingly  depressed  in  price. 

20.  Silver  Has  Not  Depreciated. 

The  effects  of  partisan  degeneration  are  nowhere  more 
strikingly  seen  than  in  the  unscrupulous  or  ignorant  asser¬ 
tions  of  the  Goldites  about  the  “  depreciation  of  silver.” 
They  continue  to  speak  and  to  write  of  the  “  fall  of  silver  ” 
just  as  though  the  purchasing  power  of  that  metal  had  really 
declined.  Not  once,  or  a  hundred  times,  but  a  thousand 
times  the  friends  of  truth  in  this  controversy  have  demon¬ 
strated  the  falsity  of  the  assertion  and  common  belief  that 
silver  has  greatly  declined  in  value.  It  seems  necessary  to 
iterate  and  reiterate  the  undeniable  truth,  that,  except  as 
measured  by  gold ,  the  value  of  silver  has  not  in  the  last  twenty 
years  declined  at  all.  I  therefore  append,  once  for  all,  a 
simple  demonstration,  which  ought  to  suffice,  of  the  real  facts 
about  the  purchasing  power  of  silver. 

At  the  end  of  August,  1875,  gold  and  silver  were  prac¬ 
tically  at  a  commercial  parity  of  values.  Silver  had  been  at 
a  premium,  but  gold  had  risen  after  the  act  of  demoneti¬ 
zation,  in  1873,  and  in  1875  the  two  metals  stood  on  a  level 
of  16  to  1.  That  was  twenty-one  yearn  ago.  At  that  time 
a  gold  eagle  or  its  equivalent,  3,712J  ounces  of  silver  — 
gold  being  still  at  a  premium  of  14  per  cent  above  legal-tender 
paper — would  purchase  as  follows: 


Of  wheat  —  at  $1.24  per  bushel- . 9.2  bushels. 

Of  flour  —  at  $6.75  per  barrel .  1-6  barrels. 

Of  cotton  —  at  15  cents  per  pound .  76  pounds. 

Of  mess  pork  —  at  $20.90  per  barrel . 53  barrels. 

Of  sugar  —  at  10  cents  per  pound . 114  pounds. 

Of  wool  —  at  45  cents  per  pound . 25.3  pounds. 

Of  beef  —  at  141^  cents  per  pound .  SO  pounds. 

Of  bar  iron  —  at  2.9 *4  cents  per  pound .  390  pounds. 


85 


“GOLD  NEVER  FLUCTUATES.” 

At  the  present  time  (calculating  for  August  20,  1896)  a 
gold  eagle  will  buy  of  the  above  staples  as  follows  : 


Of  wheat  —  at  55  cents  per  bushel . 18.2  bushels. 

Of  flour  —  at  $3.25  per  barrel .  3.1  barrels. 

Of  cotton  —  at  7J4  cents  per  pound . 133  pounds. 

Of  mess  pork — at  $6.25  per  barrel .  1.6  barrels. 

Of  sugar  —  at  3%  cents  per  pound .  320  pounds. 

Of  wool  —  at  15  cents  per  pound . 66.6  pounds. 

Of  beef  —  at  7  cents  per  pound . 143  pounds. 

Of  bar  iron  —  at  1.3  cents  per  pound .  769  pounds. 


A  comparison  of  these  two  tables  will  show  exactly  the 
appreciation  in  the  purchasing  power  of  gold  since  the  time 
(1875)  when  that  metal  and  silver  were  at  a  commercial 
parity  —  an  appreciation  which  is  the  direct  result  of  the 
insidious  influences  of  demonetization. 

At  the  present  time  (August  20,  1896)  the  raw  silver  in 
ten  silver  dollars,  that  is,  8,712 \  grains  of  uncoined  silver , 
will  purchase  of  the  above  staples  as  follows : 


Of  wheat  —  at  55  cents  per  bushel .  9.8  bushels. 

Of  flour  —  at  $3.25  per  barrel .  1.7  barrels. 

Of  cotton  —  at  1%  cents  per  pound . 71.8  pounds. 

Of  mess  pork  —  at  $6.25  per  barrel . 86  barrels. 

Of  sugar  —  at  334  cents  per  pound . 173  pounds. 

Of  wool  —  at  15  cents  per  pound . 35.9  pounds. 

Of  beef  —  at  7  cents  per  pound .  77  pounds. 

Of  bar  iron  —  at  1.3  cents  per  pound . 415  pounds. 


A  comparison  of  tables  one  and  three  will  show  beyond 
controversy  that  in  the  case  of  the  eight  staples  examined  the 
raw  silver  in  ten  silver  dollars  will  now  buy  more  of  all  but 
two  (cotton  and  beef)  than  a  gold  eagle  would  buy  in  1875. 
In  the  case  of  cotton  there  has  been  the  loss  of  a  fraction,  and 
in  the  case  of  beef  of  three  pounds  in  a  hundred  weight. 
Therefore  the  purchasing  power  of  uncoined  silver  as  meas¬ 
ured  by  the  average  of  the  great  staples  of  the  American 
market  has  not  depreciated  but  actually  appreciated  since 
that  date  when  silver  and  gold  were  last  at  a  commercial 
parity.  The  demonstration  is  as  certain  as  any  other  mathe¬ 
matical  result. 

21.  “Gold  Never  Fluctuates.” 

Incidentally,  also,  it  is  demonstrated  that  gold  is  not ,  as  the 
Goldites  say,  an  undeviating  measure  of  values.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  it  is  a  deviating  measure.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  silver  is  the  steadier  and  more  honest  measure  of  the  two. 
It  keeps  pace  more  truly  in  its  movements  with  the  market 
values  of  the  world ;  and  these  market  values,  derived  from 
the  labor  that  produces  them,  are  the  real  criterion  of  measure- 


36 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR, 


ment  always  and  everywhere.  On  the  other  hand,  gold 
climbs  up  the  column  higher  and  higher  under  conditions 
to  which  it  is  more  sensitive  than  silver. 

If  any  one  economic  truth  is  demonstrable  it  is  the  sensi¬ 
tiveness  of  gold  in  the  market.  The  comparative  steadiness 
of  gold  in  its  production  is  admitted  :  that  is,  the  supply  of 
gold  is  comparatively  an  undeviating  element  of  value ;  but 
the  demand  for  gold  is  one  of  the  most  variable  forces  in  the 
markets  of  the  world.  The  effects  of  this  varying  demand  are 
intensified  by  the  relatively  small  quantity  of  existing  gold  — 
to  the  degree  that  the  resulting  fluctuations  in  the  price  are 
among  the  most  striking  phenomena  ever  witnessed  in  the 
marts  of  commerce. 

Time  was  when  under  the  conspiracy  of  two  men  com¬ 
mercial  gold  in  the  United  States  was  cornered  more  com¬ 
pletely  than  ever  wheat  was  cornered  in  the  Chicago  pit.  In 
September  of  1869,  Jay  Gould  and  James  Fisk,  Jr.,  with  the 
aid  of  their  brokers  and  a  few  other  subordinates,  drove  gold 
into  a  corner,  and  in  the  course  of  a  fortnight  forced  the 
price  of  44  the  undeviating  standard  ”  from  130  to  165  cents 
to  the  dollar.  On  the  24th  of  the  month  (memorable  as 
Black  Friday)  the  corner  was  broken  by  the  action  of  the 
government  of  the  United  States  ;  the  treasury  was  opened, 
and  a  stream  of  government  gold  was  poured  on  the  heads  of 
the  conspirators  until  they  fled  from  the  scene  of  their  glory. 
As  they  went  out  of  the  Gold  Room  the  index  hand  on  the 
gold  clock  went  backwards,  and  44  the  undeviating  standard  ” 
fell  thirty  per  cent  in  twenty-five  minutes  !  No  other  such 
memorable  collapse  in  the  price  of  a  great  commodity  was 
ever  witnessed  under  the  sun. 

The  advantages  which  the  anti-silver  legislation  of  the 
eighth  decade,  carefully  contrived  by  the  money  power  with 
machinations  and  intrigues  extending  back  to  the  close  of  the 
war, —  would  give,  and  did  give,  to  the  owners  of  gold  and 
those  to  whom  gold  had  been  promised  in  payment,  cannot  well 
be  described.  It  was  incalculable.  The  spectral  nightmare 
of  debt  built  him  a  throne  on  the  ruins  of  a  million  homes  — 
just  as  Sherman  had  said  he  would  —  and  plumed  himself  all 
summer.  The  Goldites  became  by  the  possession  of  aug¬ 
mented  power  the  autocrats  of  the  world.  Strange  indeed  to 
see  the  prices  of  all  the  products  and  industries  of  men  sink¬ 
ing,  sinking,  under  the  pressure  of  so  small  and  diabolical  an 
instrument  as  a  gold  dollar.  The  thing  has  seemed  to  be 
possessed  of  a  veritable  devil.  Its  action  has  been  like  that 


STORY  OF  THE  SHERMAN  ACT. 


37 


of  a  manikin  three  miles  out  at  sea,  submerged  to  his  chin, 
but  by  some  infernal  self-pressure  able  to  lift  himself  out  of 
the  water  to  the  horizon  of  his  waist.  Looking  around  over 
the  vast  deep,  he  cries  in  glee,  44  Great  heavens,  how  the 
ocean  has  sunk  away  !  ” 

22.  Weakness  of  the  Bland-Allison  Law. 

The  act  of  remonetization  was  weak  in  this  —  that  it 
permitted  a  fatal  discrimination  against  silver.  It  limited 
the  coinage  and  theoretically  reduced  silver  to  the  rank  of 
merchandise.  At  length  the  people  came  to  understand  the 
flaw  in  the  Bland-Allison  law,  and  by  the  year  1890  they 
determined  to  renew  the  struggle  for  the  complete  restoration 
of  silver  money.  By  the  same  date  Shylock  concluded  that 
a  favorable  crisis  had  arrived  for  him  to  get  undone  in  toto 
the  legislation  of  1878.  He  had  succeeded  in  the  interim, 
by  means  of  the  discrimination  against  silver  as  primary 
money,  and  by  availing  himself  of  the  results  of  the  stoppage 
of  free  coinage  in  the  Latin  Union,  in  raising  the  price  of  gold 
about  thirty  per  cent.  This  fact,  taken  the  other  way,  gave 
opportunity  to  Shylock  to  deplore  the  existence  of  a  seventy- 
cent  silver  dollar.  He  was  grieved  beyond  measure  at  the 
dishonesty  of  such  a  dollar  —  not  on  his  own  account,  but 
for  the  credit  of  his  country ! 

The  purchasing  power  of  raw  silver  had  not,  according  to 
the  average  prices  of  the  other  great  commodities  of  the 
world’s  market,  declined  at  all  in  the  twelve  intervening 
years;  but  the  fundholding  interests  had  contrived  a  con¬ 
dition  of  values  and  prices  that  enabled  them,  by  jugglery 
and  falsehood,  to  denounce  the  silver  dollar  as  a  depreciated 
and  dishonest  coin,  and  thus  to  force  a  disparity  in  the  bull¬ 
ion  values  of  the  two  metals. 

23.  Story  of  the  Sherman  Act. 

The  people  and  their  representatives,  however,  smiled  at 
the  ravings  of  the  Goldites,  and  went  forward  to  complete 
the  legislation  of  1878.  At  this  time,  namely  in  1890,  there 
was  a  firm  majority  in  both  houses  of  Congress  in  favor  of 
the  free  coinage  of  silver.  The  nation  as  such  was  in  favor 
of  that  measure.  The  administration  was  against  it.  The 
question  was  introduced  into  Congress  in  several  forms. 
Motions  and  bills  were  multiplied.  At  length  on  the  seven¬ 
teenth  of  June,  1890,  the  Senate,  which  body  has  never 
appeared  to  a  better  advantage  in  our  history,  boldly  took  the 


38 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


initiative,  without  giving  the  enemy  a  chance  to  adopt  his 
usual  tactics,  and  suddenly  prepared  and  passed  an  act  for 
the  absolute  restoration  of  silver  to  its  old-time  constitutional 
place  in  the  currency  system  of  the  United  States. 

The  Senate  at  this  date  was  strongly  Republican,  and  the 
majority  in  favor  of  the  Free-Coinage  Bill  was  seventeen.  In 
the  House  of  Representatives  there  was  an  unequivocal 
majority  in  favor  of  the  measure ;  hut  before  this  majority 
could  declare  itself  and  force  upon  the  President  the  (to 
him)  dangerous  alternative  of  either  accepting  the  will  of  the 
country  or  of  obeying  the  behest  of  the  money  power  with  a 
veto,  the  bill  was  arrested  by  the  Speaker,  Thomas  B.  Reed, 
and  then,  under  the  dictation  of  the  administration  and  Sen¬ 
ator  John  Sherman,  a  new  bill  was  prepared,  which  took  the 
name  of  its  author  and  is  known  as  the  Sherman  Law. 

This  measure,  a  shuffling  and  ingenious  compromise,  was 
injected  into  the  monetary  legislation  of  the  country  merely 
to  prevent  the  adoption  of  free  coinage  by  Congress  and  to 
gain  time  for  the  conspirators.  It  was  conceived  in  intrigue 
and  stigmatized  by  its  own  inventors  from  the  day  of  its 
inception.  The  bill  was  insinuated  into  the  House  in  place 
of  the  Free-Coinage  Bill  of  the  Senate,  and  was  forced  upon 
that  body,  whose  members  could  not  bear  the  whip  of  party 
and  the  loss  of  patronage.  The  act  thus  adopted  by  the 
House  was  taken  back  to  the  Senate,  and  that  body  was 
thrown  upon  its  haunches  by  the  same  power  that  had  pre¬ 
vailed  in  the  House.  The  majority  of  seventeen  yielded,  and 
the  Sherman  Law,  so-called,  became  a  fact  with  the  signature 
of  the  President. 

This  law  pretended  to  be  a  bill  in  the  interest  of  silver 
money  and  for  the  preservation  of  bimetallism  in  the  United 
States.  To  a  certain  extent  it  was  so  ;  but  at  the  same  time 
it  was  a  cunningly  devised  expedient  of  the  Goldites,  by 
which  they  ultimately  gained  in  the  contest  with  the  majority 
ten  times  more  than  they  lost. 

For  a  short  time  after  the  passage  of  the  law  there  seemed 
to  be  a  distinct  gain  for  the  cause  of  silver.  Notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  the  Sherman  Law  was  not  a  genuine  silver  law, 
the  first  effect  of  it  —  energized  by  the  popular  misapprehen¬ 
sion  on  the  subject  —  was  a  marked  decline  in  the  premium 
on  gold.  This  was  shown  in  a  corresponding  rise  in  the 
bullion  price  of  silver.  The  silver  rate  was  advanced  from 
day  to  day,  according  to  the  London  quotations,  through  a 
period  of  eight  or  ten  weeks.  Then  the  advance  was  checked. 


STORY  OF  THE  SHERMAN  ACT. 


39 


The  quotations  stood  for  a  brief  period  at  the  crest,  and  then 
began  that  steady  and  long-continued  decline  which  reached 
the  depths  in  1893-94. 

This  phenomenon  was  caused  in  a  large  part  by  the  shrewd 
action  of  Great  Britain.  That  power  was  alarmed  at  the 
results  which  seemed  to  follow  the  Sherman  Law.  For 
many  years  Great  Britain  had  been  purchasing  American  and 
Mexican  silver  at  the  rate  of  about  fifty  millions  annually. 
These  purchases  she  made  at  bullion  rates,  and  the  bullion 
she  coined  and  sent  out  at  coin  rates  to  her  more  than  three 
hundred  millions  of  East  Indian  subjects.  It  was  a  harvest 
bountiful  and  easy.  The  United  States  and  Mexico  paid  the 
reapers,  and  Great  Britain  gathered  the  sheaves. 

Seeing  the  advance  in  the  price  of  silver  in  the  latter  part 
of  1890,  Great  Britain  boldly  and  unscrupulously  during  the 
remainder  of  that  year  and  the  first  half  of  1891  cut  down 
her  purchases  of  American  silver  by  fully  ten  millions  of 
ounces,  with  a  view  to  glutting  the  market,  reducing  the  price, 
and  influencing  American  legislation.  She  suceeded  on  all 
three  points.  That  she  nearly  ruined  her  industries  in  India 
and  brought  millions  of  her  subjects  to  beggary  was  nothing  ; 
she  was  playing  for  a  larger  stake  ! 

By  the  Act  of  1890  the  gold  monometallists  succeeded 
once  more  in  preparing  a  situation  of  which  they  could  avail 
themselves  in  the  future.  The  law  was  so  framed  that  when 
through  the  abuse  of  it  by  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  it 
should  prove  a  failure  —  as  from  the  first  it  was  intended  by 
its  makers  to  be  —  the  only  thing  required  on  the  part  of  the 
money  power  was  to  raise  a  clamor  against  a  single  clause  of 
the  law  and  secure  the  repeal  of  that  clause.  By  so  doing 
the  whole  fabric  of  the  silver  legislation  of  the  country, 
extending  at  broken  intervals  from  the  foundation  of  the 
republic  to  the  year  1890,  would  be  dissolved  like  a  fiction, 
and  gold  monometallism  would  reign  supreme. 

The  United  States  now  entered  upon  the  era  of  silver 
purchasing.  The  metal  which  the  men  of  the  constitutional 
era  had  chosen  whereby  to  measure  all  other  values  (gold 
included)  was  degraded  to  merchandise.  The  Sherman  Bill 
provided  for  the  coinage  of  silver  dollars  “  at  the  discretion 
of  the  secretary  of  the  treasury.”  It  might  as  well  have  pro¬ 
vided  that  the  directors  of  the  Bank  of  England  should,  at 
their  discretion,  hold  their  sittings  in  Mozambique  !  It  was 
never  intended  to  coin  the  purchased  silver,  but  to  treat  it  as 
merchandise.  It  was  intended  to  accumulate  it,  and  then  to 
raise  an  alarm  about  the  accumulation. 


40 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


The  law  continued  in  force  for  three  years  and  four  months. 
During  that  period  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  purchased 
monthly  four  million  five  hundred  thousand  ounces  of  silver, 
and  issued  therefor  legal-tender  treasury  notes  redeemable  in 
either  silver  or  gold  at  the  option  of  the  secretary.  In  this 
instance  the  option  was  cunningly  restored  to  the  payer ,  with 
the  full  knowledge  that  the  payer  would  use  that  option  in  a 
manner  further  to  depress  the  relative  price  of  silver  bullion 
and  to  make  gold  the  dearer  coin.  This  provision  of  the  law 
was  said  to  be  an  expedient  for  preserving  the  parity  of  the 
two  metals,  but  in  reality  it  was  an  expedient  to  exaggerate 
their  disparity  by  enabling  the  holders  of  the  treasury  notes, 
with  the  connivance  of  the  secretary,  to  draw  therefor  the 
gold  of  the  treasury,  leaving  the  silver  to  accumulate. 

We  need  not  here  enter  at  length  into  the  beauties  of  the 
Sherman  Law.  The  people  of  the  United  States  now  under¬ 
stand  it.  They  now  know  what  it  was  intended  for,  and 
what  it  was  made  to  accomplish.  They  perceive  clearly 
enough  —  all  intelligent  men  perceive  —  that  the  Act  of 
1890  was,  in  the  purpose  of  its  inventors,  but  another  adroit 
step  in  the  processes  by  which  silver  was  to  be  ultimately 
discarded  as  primary  money,  and  the  United  States  placed  in 
firm  monetary  league  with  Great  Britain  on  the  single  basis  of 
gold.  In  the  short  space  of  three  years,  matters  had  gone  so 
far  that  the  gold  party,  then  in  firm  possession  of  the  admin¬ 
istration  which  it  had  created  in  1892  for  its  own  purposes, 
alarmed  lest  the  country  should  actually  reach  free  coinage 
by  means  of  the  Sherman  Law,  and  triumphant  by  its  power 
over  the  House  of  Representatives,  felt  sufficiently  embold¬ 
ened  to  attack  the  purchasing  clause  of  the  law  and,  by 
annulling  that,  destroy  the  whole. 

24.  The  Melee  and  Mockery  of  1898. 

It  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  recite  the  story  of  the  contest 
of  1893.  The  miserable  mel6e  is  still  fresh  in  the  minds  of 
men.  It  may  be  that  the  Sherman  Law  ought  to  have  been 
abrogated,  but  not  without  the  condition  of  free  coinage. 
It  was  not  intended  to  be  a  silver  law,  but  a  law  in  the  inter¬ 
est  of  gold.  Certain  it  is  that  nothing  could  have  been 
devised  more  suitable  to  the  ultimate  interests  of  the  gold 
party.  That  power,  then  in  active  control  of  the  leading 
political  parties,  was  able  to  work  its  will.  The  repeal  of 
the  purchasing  clause  of  the  Act  of  1890  was  effected  with¬ 
out  conditions ;  and  with  the  passage  of  that  repeal,  on  the 


SPINAL  CORD  OF  OUR  FINANCIAL  SYSTEM. 


41 


first  of  November,  1893,  the  legislation  against  silver,  which 
was  begun  in  silence  in  1873  against  the  interests  of  honest 
money  in  the  United  States,  and  in  favor  of  substituting  a 
long  dollar  worth  fully  a  hundred  and  ninety  cents  for  the 
dollar  of  the  law  and  the  contract,  was  boisterously  and  tri¬ 
umphantly  completed.  By  that  act,  the  will  of  the  people  of 
the  United  States  was  prostrated.  The  people  themselves 
were  gagged  and  manacled.  Both  houses  of  Congress  were 
thrown  down,  and  Juggernaut  was  pulled  over  them  by  the 
minions  of  a  power  having  its  head-centre  in  Lombard 
Street,  London. 

25.  The  Bond  is  the  Spinal  Cord  of  our  Finan¬ 
cial  System. 

Around  the  bonded  debt  of  the  United  States  all  the 
other  bonds  and  debts  of  the  American  people  have  clus¬ 
tered.  The  national  bond  has  been  the  spinal  cord  of  the 
whole  financial  life.  The  bond  has  set  the  pace  for  the 
whole  business  movement  of  the  United  States.  To  the 
government  bond  all  the  other  bonds  have  conformed ;  by  it 
all  manner  of  indebtedness  has  been  shaped  and  measured  and 
controlled.  The  manipulation  of  the  national  bond  and  of 
the  dollar  of  payment  has  been  the  manipulation  of  every 
other  bond  and  every  other  dollar  of  the  American  people. 
The  stupendous  frauds  by  which  the  obligation  of  the  nation 
has  been  doubled  and  trebled  and  almost  quadrupled  in 
value,  have  been  but  the  sign  and  index  to  the  like  process 
going  on  in  every  branch  of  business  and  every  form  of  obli¬ 
gation  in  the  United  States.  The  criminal  forces  which 
have  played  upon  the  bonded  debt  of  the  nation  in  its  aggre¬ 
gate  capacity,  have  played  in  like  manner  and  with  equally 
disastrous  results  upon  every  obligation  between  man  and 
man  under  the  canopy  of  the  American  sky. 

Thus,  beginning  with  the  bonded  debt  of  the  United 
States,  all  forms  of  debt  have  been  infected.  As  the  bonded 
debt  has  increased  in  its  purchasing  power,  so  every  other 
form  of  debt  has  increased  in  magnitude  and  burden,  until 
not  only  has  the  nation  groaned  under  the  ever-increasing 
load,  but  each  individual  man  who  has  purchased  anything 
with  deferred  payment,  from  a  basket  of  potatoes  in  the 
market  to  a  transcontinental  railway,  has  staggered  away 
under  the  ever-growing  burden  of  his  debt,  until  his  limbs 
have  broken  under  him,  and  he  himself  has  been  crushed  to 
the  earth. 


42 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


26.  Ruin  of  Industries  by  the  Gold  Intrigue. 

Under  the  ruinous  regime  of  the  International  Gold 
League  —  begun  in  1878  and  completed  in  1898  — the 
prices  of  all  the  products  of  human  industry  and  enterprise 
have  shrivelled  and  shrunk  away  until  the  American  people 
have  found  the  near  approach  to  pauperism.  When  the 
products  of  labor  become  worthless,  the  laborer  becomes  first 
a  peasant  and  then  a  pauper.  One  has  only  to  note  the 
prices  now  current,  and  to  compare  them  with  the  prices 
which  prevailed  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  to  see  at  a 
glance  how  far  down  the  slope  we  have  slipped,  and  how 
near  we  are  to  the  precipice  and  the  plunge.  In  many  parts 
of  the  great  and  abundant  West — a  glorious  country 
favored  of  God  and  redeemed  by  man  —  the  people  are 
burning  corn  for  fuel !  The  coal  barons  have  cornered  the 
coal,  and  the  Goldites  have  cornered  the  farmers  !  That 
great  army  of  noble,  cool-headed  men,  whose  weapons  are 
plough  and  spade  and  reaper,  whose  treasure-houses  are  barns, 
and  whose  sole  wealth  is  taken  from  the  holy  ground  —  that 
mighty  army  of  toilers  is  driven  down  into  a  straight  place 
between  the  devil  and  the  sea ;  and  unless  they  break 
through  the  surrounding  camps  of  myrmidons,  they  will  all 
be  taken,  subjugated,  and  reduced  to  serfdom.  Now,  if 
ever,  is  the  farmer’s  time  to  rise  and  recover  his  liberties  and 
his  rights  ! 

27.  This  is  the  Farmers’  War. 

In  fact  the  present  contest  in  America  is,  first  of  all, 
the  farmers’  war.  Being  the  ultimate  producers  of  what¬ 
ever  is  and  not  the  intermediate  producers  of  whatever  may 
be,  they,  more  than  any  others,  are  oppressed  and  shaken 
over  the  brink  of  ruin.  The  pressure  of  plutocracy  is 
heaviest  at  the  bottom  and  the  bottom  is  the  ground.  The 
bottom  is  the  pasture,  the  field,  the  orchard,  the  garden.  It 
is  the  river  valley  and  the  prairie  where  the  people  dwell. 
It  is  the  meadow-land  and  the  rich  bottom,  the  upland  and 
the  field  of  cotton  that  lie  under  the  curse.  The  money 
power  has  cursed  the  people’s  homes;  and  as  the  shingles 
decay  and  the  gates  begin  to  swing  on  broken  hinges  the 
minions  of  that  power  set  up,  not  a  cry  of  sympathy,  but  a 
shout  of  derision. 

28.  What  Caused  the  “Decline  in  Silver.” 

For  the  money-jobbers  of  the  world  the  year  1893  was  a 
memorable  epoch.  They  were  busy  in  the  Old  World  and 


THE  PANIC  AND  THE  CARLISLE  BONDS. 


43 


the  New.  In  Great  Britain,  Shylock  lifted  his  hand  and  the 
mints  of  India  were  shut  against  silver.  For  ages  that  metal 
had  been  the  money  metal  of  the  people.  Before  Great 
Britain  had  emerged  from  savagery  the  teeming  millions  of 
the  valleys  of  the  Indus  and  the  Ganges  had  made  their  do¬ 
mestic  exchanges  and  carried  on  their  foreign  trade  by  the 
measure  of  silver  money.  From  the  days  of  the  Buddha, 
aye,  from  the  days  when  the  old  poets  of  Brahma  first 
chanted  the  hymns  of  the  Veda,  silver  had  been  the  known 
and  honored  coin  and  standard  of  the  historic  kingdoms  and 
empires  of  opulent  India.  But  the  conqueror  put  his  foot 
on  the  Hindu  nations,  and  in  the  fulness  of  cupidity  and 
the  recklessness  of  unbridled  power  the  British  mandate 
was  sent  across  ten  thousand  miles  of  land  and  sea,  44  No 
more  coinage  of  your  time-honored  money.  Shut  up  your 
mints  and  accept  commercial  degradation.  Starve  if  you 
will,  but  shut  them  up.” 

This  enabled  the  money  conspirators  of  western  Europe 
and  America  to  point  prophetically  to  44  the  rapid  decline  of 
silver.”  It  was  at  this  juncture  that  the  called  session  of 
Congress  under  the  dictation  of  government  was  pretend- 
edly  striving  to  avert  the  panic.  The  panic  was  about  to 
come,  said  the  money-jobbers,  as  though  the  production  of  the 
panic  was  not  the  very  task  at  which  they  were  laboring. 
If  the  President  in  issuing  his  call  for  the  special  session 
had  said :  44  The  chief  executive  is  anxious  to  produce  a 
panic,  to  wreck  the  remaining  business  of  the  United  States, 
to  prostrate  trade,  and  to  bring  an  added  curse  and  blight  on 
American  industry,”  he  would  have  been  strictly  within  the 
historical  verities.  The  repeal  of  the  Sherman  Law  was  not 
an  act  to  avert  a  panic,  but  to  produce  one.  It  was  not  to 
strengthen  the  national  treasury  and  to  buttress  the  finances 
of  the  LTnited  States,  but  to  scuttle  the  treasury  as  literally 
as  ever  a  ship  was  scuttled  by  pirates  bold,  and  to  disorder 
the  finances  until  even  the  atrocity  of  selling  bonds  to  the 
extent  of  hundreds  of  millions  should  be  declared  to  be 
necessary  44  in  order  to  preserve  the  national  honor.” 

29.  The  Panic  and  the  Carlisle  Bonds. 

Thus  came  the  panic  with  devastation  and  ruin  in  its 
train.  The  panic  was  but  an  incident  of  the  programme. 
Down  went  the  business  of  the  nation.  The  repeal  of  the 
Sherman  Law  instead  of  producing  confidence  brought  only 
distrust  and  disaster.  The  mortgage  of  Shylock  on  the 


44 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


American  people  was  foreclosed,  and  he  had  himself  ap¬ 
pointed  receiver.  For  more  than  three  years  he  has  been 
engaged  in  settling  up  the  estate  and  in  watching  the  interests 
of  the  preferred  creditors!  The  business  is  not  yet  completed, 
and  many  years  will  he  consumed  before  it  is  completed  unless 
in  the  pending  trial  of  the  People  versus  Plutocracy  the 
receiver  shall  be  discharged  and  his  cause  thrown  out  of  court. 

Two  hundred  and  sixty-two  millions  of  added  debt!  In¬ 
terest  on  the  same,  for  thirty  years,  more  than  $275,000,000! 
Total  of  added  debt  more  than  $537,000,000 !  In  a  time  of 
peace  more  than  a  half  billion  laid  upon  the  people  for 
nothing  !  This  prodigious  sum  is  to  be  sucked  up  by  the  vam¬ 
pire  of  bonded  power  out  of  the  breath  and  blood  of  the 
toiling  masses.  The  leech-mouth  of  that  vampire  is  fastened 
for  thirty  years  on  the  right  arm  of  every  laborer  who  drives 
a  plane  or  wields  a  sledge  or  guides  a  plow!  For  thirty 
years  that  leech,-mouth  is  fastened  on  the  bosom  of  every 
mother  and  sister  and  bride  in  America  whose  son  or  brother 
or  husband  is  not  a  capitalist.  For  thirty  yearn  that  leech- 
mouth,  red  with  cherry  blood,  is  fastened  on  the  rosy  cheek 
of  every  workingman’s  baby  in  America.  And  this  is  what 
comes  of  refusing  to  use  and  pay  out,  without  discrimination, 
the  legal  and  honest  silver  money  heaped  up  in  the  treasury 
vaults  of  the  United  States.  Shylock  preferred  gold,  and 
the  treasurer  bowed  himself  down  and  said,  “  Yea,  my 
Lord  !  ” 

Congress  in  1893,  floundering  through  muck  and  ooze, 
striving  to  do  much  but  doing  little,  did  one  thing  in  the 
cause  of  truth  and  right.  It  passed  a  law  for  the  taxation  of 
incomes.  This  measure,  however,  was  suggested  by  expedi¬ 
ency  rather  than  by  a  sense  of  justice.  The  passage  of  the 
Wilson  Bill  made  certain  a  great  reduction  in  the  revenues 
of  the  United  States.  The  removal  of  the  high-protective 
duties  on  imports  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  lessen  the 
resources  of  the  treasury  by  an  enormous  aggregate,  and  this 
at  a  time  when  the  treasury  had  already,  by  the  policy  of 
the  preceding  administration,  been  brought  to  the  crumbling 
edge  of  bankruptcy.  The  tariffs  removed  must  be  counter¬ 
balanced  in  some  way,  and  an  income  tax  suggested  itself  as 
a  just  and  rational  part  of  the  remedy. 

30.  The  Income  Tax  and  the  Supreme  Court. 

A  bill  was  accordingly  passed,  laying  a  tax  of  two  per  cent 
on  the  excess  of  all  incomes  above  four  thousand  dollars  a  year. 


THE  INCOME  TAX  AND  THE  SUPREME  COURT.  45 

The  measure  rested  on  the  simple  principle  that  the  opulent 
ought  to  be  taxed  as  well  as  the  poor  —  that  the  rich  and 
great,  whose  revenues  are  derived  from  investments,  ought 
to  pay  to  the  government  a  percentage  on  their  incomes  as 
well  as  the  humble  producers  —  farmers,  mechanics,  trades¬ 
men,  artisans,  laborers  —  whose  wages  and  modest  profits  are 
derived  from  daily  toil.  But  against  this  principle  the 
money  power  arrayed  itself  in  solid  phalanx.  Plutocracy 
filled  all  the  trenches  with  its  mercenaries  for  the  defence  of  its 
citadel.  In  Congress  and  out  of  Congress,  it  shouted  its 
epithets  and  vented  its  sophistries.  They  who  favored  the 
income  tax  were  communists,  robbers,  anarchists !  It  was 
class  legislation  directed  against  the  honest  accumulations  of 
industrious  men.  It  was  robbery  of  the  rich,  because  they 
were  rich,  to  fill  the  ragged  pockets  of  the  poor  because  they 
were  poor.  It  was  everything  odious,  and  its  promoters  were 
everything  dishonest  and  rapacious. 

But  the  law  was  passed,  and  the  war  had  to  be  carried  to 
another  part  of  the  field.  There  stood  the  Supreme  Court. 
Against  that  fortress  the  money  power  threw  itself  with 
the  greatest  violence  —  and  the  fortress  went  down  !  W e 
do  not  say — and  do  not  believe — that  the  Supreme  Court 
in  annulling  the  tax  on  incomes,  in  pronouncing  the  law 
unconstitutional,  was  corrupted.  It  was  not.  But  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  court  are  men ;  they  breathe  the  air  of  the  age 
and  they  become  saturated  with  the  spirit  and  influences  that 
are  around  them.  Washington  city  is  near  the  great  seats  of 
the  money  power.  It  is  remote  from  the  nation,  from  the 
people.  The  Supreme  Court  is  the  most  remote  of  all  of  our 
institutions  from  democratic  sympathies.  It  was  so  in  1859. 
It  was  so  in  1893.  The  decision  rendered  in  the  former 
year  became  memorable  in  American  history  as  an  example 
of  what  the  Supreme  Court  could  do  in  shoring  up  and 
fortifying  the  system  of  human  bondage.  The  decision  ren¬ 
dered  in  the  latter  year  was,  of  the  two,  less  meritorious  in 
law  and  on  the  whole  more  hurtful  to  civilization.  Judge 
Taney’s  decision  was  a  judgment  against  the  negro;  Judge 
Fuller’s  decision  was  a  verdict  against  mankind  !  The  latter 
was  also  less  respectable  ;  for  it  was  rendered  in  a  way  to 
make  the  judgment  of  the  Court  at  once  distrusted  and 
odious.  The  decision  did  not  come  forth  in  clear  tones. 
The  Court  was  almost  equally  divided.  Part  of  the  law  was 
at  first  upheld  and  part  of  it  condemned.  Then  a  Justice 
reversed  his  own  decision,  and  it  was  only  in  this  way  that 


46 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


the  law  was  declared  unconstitutional.  It  may  have  been 
unconstitutional ,  but  it  was  right ;  and  as  surely  as  the  Amer¬ 
ican  people  retain  their  liberties  and  patriotism  —  as  surely 
as  the  Republic  stands  for  what  its  name  implies  and  what 
it  was  created  for  by  the  fathers  —  so  surely  will  an  income 
tax  be  made  that  will  be  both  constitutional  and  right !  The 
people  will  have  justice  sooner  or  later ;  it  is  only  a  ques¬ 
tion  of  time. 

Let  it  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  stand  of  the  money 
power  against  the  income  tax,  and  the  successful  assault 
of  that  power  on  the  law,  before  the  Supreme  Court,  were  only 
a  manifestation  and  incident  in  the  long-existing  purpose  of 
plutocracy  not  to  be  taxed  at  all.  Nothing  short  of  absolute 
exemption  from  the  necessaiy  burdens  of  government,  will 
ever  satisfy  the  soulless  rapacity  of  those  who  have  gathered 
the  wealth  produced  by  the  laborers  of  America.  Here  again 
it  is  the  millionaires  on  one  side  and  the  millions  on  the  other. 
If  the  millionaires  had  ever  shown  a  reasonable  disposition  to 
bear  even  a  respectable  fraction  of  the  public  load,  that  fact 
would  go  far  toward  allaying  the  distrust  of  the  honest  many 
against  the  intolerable  selfishness  of  the  dishonest  few.  On 
the  contrary,  the  plutocracy  considers  one  question  only,  and 
that  is  how  to  evade  everything.  The  evasion  of  taxation,  by 
the  money  lords,  is  perhaps  the  most  shameless  manifestation 
of  greed  ever  witnessed  among  men,  and  the  shamelessness 
of  the  evasion  is  only  equalled  by  its  success.  It  is  literally 
true  that  the  upper  one-half  of  American  wealth  refuses  to  be 
taxed  and  that  it  almost  wholly  escapes,  either  by  unjust  law 
or  by  dishonesty,  craft  and  perjury,  the  burden  of  the  nation, 
rolling  it  over  by  intrigue  and  pressure  on  the  courts,  upon 
the  bent  and  breaking  shoulders  of  the  poor.  The  tax  admin¬ 
istration  in  the  United  States  has' thus  come  to  this  :  A  sys¬ 
tem  of  discrimination  by  which  the  general  burdens  of  society 
are  laid  Avithout  mercy  or  compunction  on  the  toiling  many 
to  the  end  that  Avealth  and  its  progeny  may  go  unburdened 
on  summer  cruises  around  the  Avorld. 

31.  Seeming  Success  of  the  Gold  Conspiracy. 

The  conspiracy  of  the  International  Gold  Trust  thus 
seemed  to  triumph  in  1893.  The  indignation  of  the  people 
against  it  appeared  to  be  of  no  avail.  That  poAver  which 
became  organic  as  a  bondholding  interest  in  America  just  after 
the  close  of  the  Civil  War  had  now,  by  its  league  Avith  the 
financial  system  of  Great  Britain,  succeeded  in  trampling 


THE  GOLD  PROPAGANDA  AND  ITS  AGENTS. 


47 


down  truth  and  justice,  in  choking  the  protests  of  a  mighty 
people,  in  destroying  their  industries,  in  reducing  them  from 
proprietors  to  tenants,  in  taking  away  the  rewards  of  labor 
and  enterprise,  and  in  establishing  a  condition  which  tends 
inevitably  to  the  early  and  permanent  institution  in  the  United 
States  of  a  peasantry  subordinated  to  the  will  and  purpose  of 
their  masters.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  the  people  will 
bear  it ! 

The  visible  gold  in  the  world  amounts  to  about  three 
hundred  and  ninety-three  cubic  yards.  The  greater  part  of 
this,  nearly  all  of  it  indeed,  is  owned  by  private  parties.  The 
Rothschilds,  alone,  own  more  than  sixteen  hundred  millions  of 
the  whole.  The  gold  supply  of  the  world  is  controlled 
finally  by  a  few  men  who  hate  free  institutions  and  care  nothing 
for  the  rights  of  man  or  the  interests  of  civilization. 

On  the  basis  of  these  three  hundred  and  ninety-three  cubic 
yards  of  gold  it  is  proposed  to  conduct  the  business  of  all  the 
world !  It  is  the  most  monstrous  scheme  ever  known  in 
history.  The  public  and  private  debts  of  the  American  peo¬ 
ple  amount  to  about  forty-five  billions  of  dollars.  Of  this 
debt  less  than  ten  per  cent  is  held  abroad.  Most  of  the  for¬ 
eign  holding  is  in  Great  Britain.  Yet,  by  the  bond  of  this 
ten  per  cent,  the  United  States  has  become  an  appanage  of 
Great  Britain.  The  independence  which  we  thought  we  had 
achieved  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  ago,  and  which  we 
supposed  we  had  confirmed  fourscore  years  ago,  has  been 
reconverted  into  a  miserable  dependency  which  might  suggest 
to  a  pessimist  that  it  would  have  been  better  never  to  break 
with  our  good  mother  at  all ! 

32.  The  Gold  Propaganda  and  its  Agents. 

This  crushing  indebtedness  of  the  people  has  alarmed  the 
money  power,  and  its  emissaries  are  trying  to  explain  it  away. 
In  the  spring  of  1895  the  gold  propaganda  sent  out  from 
New  York  a  number  of  distinguished  advocates  to  teach  the 
people  how  business  is  reviving ;  how  the  financial  question 
is  solved  ;  how  silver  is  dead,  and  in  particular  how  easy  and 
admirable  has  been  the  change  from  the  bimetallic  basis  of 
currency  to  gold  monometallism.  In  this  interest  one  emi¬ 
nent  orator  appeared  at  Detroit  and  delivered  an  oration  in 
which  it  were  hard  to  say  whether  the  wit  were  more  stale  or 
the  facts  more  false.  He  showed  that  it  was  easy  for  the 
American  people  to  extricate  themselves  from  debt  by  the 
standard  of  gold,  for  the  reason  that  the  public  and  private 


48 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


indebtedness  of  the  people  is  only  fourteen  billions  of  dollars. 
One  might  regard  this  statement  as  being  interested  and 
excogitated  from  the  prejudice  of  the  orator,  but  for  the  sus¬ 
picion  that  he  may  have  obtained  his  figures  from  Upton  s 
financial  statistics  in  the  Census  of  1890. 

The  present  aspect  of  the  world  is  that  of  one  centralized 
power,  having  its  seat  in  London,  with  outlying  dependencies. 
India,  with  nearly  four  hundred  millions,  is  one  dependency  ; 
Australia,  Avith  four  millions,  is  another  dependency ;  Canada, 
Avith  six  millions,  is  a  third ;  the  United  States,  Avitli  seventy 
millions,  is  a  fourth ;  the  States  of  the  Latin  Union  are  the 
fifth.  Germany  and  Russia  are  flattered  Avith  the  belief  that 
they  are  members  of  the  league  ;  but  as  matter  of  fact  they 
are  only  Cambacer£s  and  Lebrun  in  the  consulate.  The 
First  Consul  —  and  the  only  one  of  any  importance  —  has 
his  headquarters  in  the  bank  of  England. 

83.  Fancies  and  Fallacies  of  the  Goldites. 

It  is  noAV  only  a  question  how  the  robbers  avIio  have 
despoiled  mankind  in  the  tAvo  civilized  continents,  by  means 
of  the  gold  conspiracy,  are  going  to  get  off  Avith  their  booty. 
They  must  have  a  little  time  and  opportunity.  In  order  to 
secure  these,  they  cajole  the  nations  Avith  pleasing  delusions 
and  fancies.  One  of  these  fancies  is  impending  universal 
Avar.  War  is  an  exciting  circumstance,  and  the  prospect  of 
Avar  serves  to  distract  the  attention  of  peoples  from  the 
Avrongs  Avhich  they  have  suffered.  The  rumor  of  Avorld-Avide 
Avar  is  the  substance  of  the  daily  neAvs.  People  read  it  and 
believe  it ;  Shylock  is  in  ecstasies  over  the  success  of  his 
ruse,  and  if  he  thought  he  could  sell  more  bonds  he  would 
plunge  all  nations  into  a  bloody  and  exterminating  conflict. 

Another  one  of  the  current  delusions  is  the  factitious  dis¬ 
covery  of  gold.  The  propaganda  having  its  headquarters  in 
London  and  its  American  branch  in  William  Street,  New 
York,  has  been  engaged  during  the  years  1895-96  in  the  dis¬ 
semination  of  the  news  of  gold  discoveries  in  all  parts  of  the 
Avorld.  South  Africa  is  teeming  with  gold ;  the  mountains  of 
South  America  are  founded  on  gold,  and  the  out-croppings  of 
it  are  seen  in  many  parts;  the  Australian  hills  are  made  of 
gold ;  California  is  nothing  but  gold ;  the  Alaskan  mines  are 
also  rich  in  gold ;  the  very  sea-bottom  on  several  coasts  reach¬ 
ing  out  for  leagues  is  a  mire  of  gold ;  neAv  discoveries  are 
made  in  Colorado  and  Arizona  and  NeAv  Mexico  and  Georgia. 
Added  finds  are  heralded  Avith  every  mail.  Soon  it  Avill  be 


THE  GOLD  PROPAGANDA  AND  ITS  AGENTS. 


49 


that  gold  shall  be  a  drug  in  the  streets  ;  it  shall  be  heaped  in 
crates,  from  which  the  passer-by  may  help  himself  and  his 
friends.  The  price  of  gold  will  thus  be  brought  down,  and 
We,  the  Managers  of  the  Enterprise,  will  have  to  adopt  stren¬ 
uous  measures  to  prevent  the  over-coinage  of  gold  as  money. 

Of  the  gold  propaganda  the  London  Bankers’  Magazine  is 
the  principal  organ.  One  of  the  last  articles  in  this  maga¬ 
zine,  on  the  subject  of  gold  production,  is  entitled  “  A  Flood 
of  Gold  Coming.”  According  to  this  disinterested  organ  the 
danger  at  present  is  not  a  scarcity  of  gold,  but  the  peril  that 
the  commercial  and  industrial  world  will  soon  be  over¬ 
whelmed  with  an  avalanche  of  that  metal.  All  the  mines  of 
the  world  are  spouting  streams  of  it !  It  is  doubtful  whether 
coinage  can  absorb  the  output ;  there  is  cause  for  alarm  lest 
the  fall  in  the  precious  stuff  shall  make  it  necessary  for  “  the 
business  interests  of  the  world  ”  to  place  rigorous  limits  on 
its  coinage.  u  To-day,”  says  the  magazine,  “  it  is  not  a 
scramble  for  gold,  but  a  coming  glut  of  gold,  that  gives  cause 
for  anxiety.  .  .  .  The  golden  stream  has  but  just  started  to 
flow  in  on  us,  and  the  full  force  of  its  rising  tide  is  yet  far 
off.  Year  by  year  it  will  swell  in  volume,  as  the  mining 
mania,  which  is  being  let  loose  in  every  part  of  the  world, 
becomes  more  and  more  prolific.  The  world’s  production  of 
gold  has  almost  doubled  itself  within  the  short  period  of 
seven  years.  .  .  .  Recent  progress  is  nothing  compared  with 
what  has  been  predicted  for  the  next  few  years.” 

Strangely  enough,  the  article  then  goes  on  to  show  that  a 
large  part  of  u  the  golden  flood  ”  is  derived  from  tailings ! 
u  In  some  cases,”  says  the  article,  u  as  much  as  a  fourth  of 
the  gross  income  is  derived  from  tailings.”  Miraculous  it  is 
that  while  the  out-pouring  flood  of  gold  from  all  the  world  is 
about  to  deluge  the  commerce  and  industries  of  mankind  and 
entail  a  depreciated  gold  dollar,  the  miners  of  South  Africa, 
even  in  the  Randt,  are  represented  as  toiling  with  cyanide 
among  the  tailings  to  get  “a  fourth  of  the  gross  income.” 
As  matter  of  fact,  this  article  in  the  Bankers ’  Magazine  was 
written  for  American  consumption.  It  was  intended  to  be 
copied,  as  it  has  been  copied,  by  the  metropolitan  press,  and 
thence  diffused  to  all  American  newspapers,  gratis,  for  their 
encouragement !  The  chairman  of  the  county  committee  is 
thus  enabled,  just  before  the  fall  elections,  to  tell  his  follow¬ 
ers  that  a  flood  of  gold  is  coming ! 

So  also  is  the  device  of  reshipping  gold  from  England. 
It  is  very  opportune  at  this  particular  juncture  to  reship  a 


50 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


few  millions  as  an  aid  to  political  oratory.  The  strange 
thing  is  that  Messrs.  Lazard  Freres,  and  other  distinguished 
money-traders,  whose  native  American  names  are  so  powerful 
a  guaranty  of  the  patriotic  business  in  which  they  are  engaged, 
should  consider  the  American  people  such  fools  as  not  to 
know  what  they  are  about.  As  soon  as  the  presidential  elec¬ 
tion  is  passed  the  tribe  of  Lazard  Freres  will  discover  that 
44  owing  to  the  low  rate  of  exchange  ”  the  exportation  of  gold 
must  be  resumed. 

34.  How  44  Business  is  Reviving.” 

Still  another  pleasing  fancy  of  the  Goldites  is  the  great 
and  prosperous  revival  of  business.  Why,  here  is  a  marvel¬ 
lous  paradox.  Business,  according  to  the  great  disinterested 
organs  of  public  opinion,  revives  and  does  not  revive  !  Man¬ 
ufacturers  flourish  again  and  do  not  flourish  again !  Enter¬ 
prise  once  more  goes  forward  with  a  bound,  and  enterprise 
does  not  bound  forward  at  all,  but  remains  inert  and  dead ! 

The  farmer,  with  his  fat-lean  kine,  rejoices  and  weeps  ! 
The  collapsed  bins  of  ten  thousand  farmyards  are  bursting 
with  high-low  wheat !  The  gold  organ  performs  this  paradox 
for  the  reason  that  it  must.  According  to  the  organ,  the 
adoption  of  the  Wilson  Bill  in  1893,  in  place  of  the  war- 
tariff  schedule  that  had  been  aggravated  to  an  inflammation 
by  the  McKinley  law,  prostrated  all  enterprises,  ruined  all 
industries  ;  and  neither  can  the  one  revive  nor  the  other  ever 
flourish  again,  until  the  flamboyant  protective  scheme  shall 
be  restored.  Therefore,  saith  the  capitalistic  press,  business 
does  not  flourish  and  cannot  flourish  again  until  the  wrong 
shall  be  righted,  after  the  next  presidential  election. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  crieth  the  organ,  the  adoption  of 
the  single  gold  standard,  instead  of  the  bimetallic  standard 
of  the  constitution,  has  restored  confidence,  and  with  the 
restoration  of  confidence,  behold  how  business  revives  !  All 
enterprises  rise  from  the  dust;  all  manufactures  rekindle 
their  fires  and  pour  forth  their  treasures.  Hence  business,  in 
the  same  act  and  by  the  same  token,  both  revives  and  does 
not  revive  !  The  proclamation  of  prosperity  and  of  industrial 
despair,  goes  forth  from  the  same  gold  organ  on  the  same 
day !  The  fact  that  the  alleged  ruin  of  American  industry 
by  the  passage  of  the  Wilson  Bill  and  the  alleged  revival  of 
all  American  industries  by  the  coincident  passage  of  the 
Gold  Bill  of  1893,  do  not  consist,  seems  not  at  all  to  trouble 
the  advocates  and  owners  of  the  honest  dollar  !  All  this 


PLUTOCRACY  AND  POLITICAL  PARTIES. 


51 


furnishes  instruction  for  the  people  and  amusement  for  the 
few  whose  understandings  cannot  he  darkened  with  the 
lying  obfuscations  of  a  goldite  newspaper. 

35.  Degradation  of  the  Capitalistic  Press. 

It  is  amazing  to  note  the  degree  to  which  the  capitalistic 
press  has  abandoned  the  people  and  embarked  in  the  slavish 
services  of  the  money  power. 

In  the  sancta  of  the  ribald  organs  of  unscrupulous  power 
truth  is  a  commodity,  humanity  a  word,  and  principle  a  rem¬ 
iniscence!  The  metropolitan  press,  with  a  few  recent  and 
honorable  exceptions,  is  the  subsidized  agent  of  Europe  in 
America,  fighting  ever  on  the  side  of  organized  greed  and  the 
cruel  aggressions  of  despotism,  and  fighting  never  on  the  side 
of  freedom  and  progress  and  the  rights  of  man. 

W oe  to  truth  and  innocence  in  such  a  court !  Woe  to 
the  weak  and  the  poor!  Woe  to  the  humble  man  and 
all  the  children  of  distress  and  want!  Woe  to  every 
enterprise  and  to  every  cause  that  is  not  the  enterprise 
of  plutocracy  and  the  cause  of  cent  per  cent ! 

The  newspaper  press  of  New  York  city,  in  particular,  pre¬ 
sents  a  spectacle  the  like  of  which  has  never,  hitherto,  been 
witnessed  in  the  world.  It  has  combined  of  its  own  motion 
in  a  crusade  against  democracy.  I  do  not  mean  the  democ¬ 
racy  of  a  party,  but  the  democracy  of  man.  Never  before 
has  there  been  a  motive  sufficiently  powerful  to  force  these 
hostile  evangels  of  power  and  pessimism  into  union.  Not 
even  in  the  Civil  War,  when  the  nation  reeled  and  quaked, 
did  the  newspapers  of  this  great  metropolis,  that  might  be 
the  pride  of  America,  but  is  not,  agree  on  anything.  They 
have  been  in  life-long  antagonism  and  deadly  hostility.  Now 
behold  the  scene :  they  are  all  as  one  in  the  service  of  that 
Street  whose  name  has  become  a  byword  throughout  the 
continent ! 

No  stronger  argument  could  be  afforded  of  the  extreme 
peril  of  the  people  and  of  the  necessity  that  is  upon 
them  to  go  diametrically  against  every  monition  and  plea 
of  the  metropolitan  press. 

36.  Plutocracy  and  Political  Parties. 

The  possession  of  the  press,  however,  does  not  satisfy  the 
plutocratic  powers.  They  must  also  purchase  and  own  the 
political  organizations  in  every  country  where  such  organiza¬ 
tions  exist.  It  is  a  supreme  point  in  the  intrigue  of  the 


52 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


International  Gold  Trust  to  create  an  International  Political 
Trust  as  the  agent  and  propagandist  of  the  great  conspiracy. 
In  this  way  it  is  hoped  that  the  beneficiaries  may  be  able  to 
gather  in  peace  the  full  fruits  of  their  financial  and  industrial 
crimes  against  the  people  and  the  nation. 

Until  recently  this  policy  of  owning  the  political  organiza¬ 
tions  has  been  highly  successful  in  America.  The  leading 
political  parties  have  differed  from  one  another  chiefly  in  the 
degree  of  their  subserviency  to  the  money  power.  It  always 
comes  to  this  in  the  last  stage  of  partisan  degeneration.  The 
partisan  logic  of  the  epoch  has  been  this :  If  we  offend  plu¬ 
tocracy  who  shall  pay  our  bills  and  load  our  caissons  with  the 
munitions  of  war  ? 

The  elections  held  in  the  United  States  from  1890  to  1894 
have  had  no  other  significance  than  that  of  a  blind  attempt 
of  the  disorganized  and  confused  people  to  punish  the  authors 
of  their  distresses,  first  one  and  then  the  other.  The  people  have 
been  groping  in  this  manner,  and  have  apparently  been  afraid 
to  rise  in  political  insurrection  against  their  masters.  They 
have  followed  their  local  leaders  and  the  monitions  of  a  polit¬ 
ical  press  that  has  been  almost  wholly  in  the  possession  of 
the  enemy.  Until  the  present  year  scarcely  a  single  great 
newspaper  could  be  found  that  in  its  tone  has  been  heartily 
friendly  to  the  common  people. 

87.  How  “Our  Gold  Will  Fly  Away.” 

The  Goldites  have,  in  the  meantime,  invented  a  long  list  of 
arguments  in  terrorem.  They  are  trying  with  bugbears  to 
scare  the  people  into  submission.  They  declare  that  under 
free  coinage,  our  gold  would  take  to  flight.  It  would  wing 
its  way  to  foreign  shores,  they  say.  Gold  coins,  under  the 
action  of  Gresham’s  law,  would  rise  a-wing  and  fly  away. 
The  United  States  would  be  drained  of  gold  and  the  nation 
left  floundering  and  drowning  in  a  sea  of  silver.  A  panic 
would  ensue,  the  like  of  which  the  world  has  never  wit¬ 
nessed. 

Than  this,  nothing  is  further  from  the  truth.  If  under 
free  coinage  our  gold  should  begin  to  fly  abroad  it  would 
not,  could  not,  continue  to  fly.  For  observe  with  care 
what  the  result  would  be.  To  simplify  the  argument 
let  us  limit  the  supposed  case  to  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain.  Suppose  that  in  the  United  States  we  have  an 
aggregate  of  two  thousand  mi] lions  of  money.  Suppose  that 
one-third  of  this  amount  is  gold,  one-third  silver,  and  one- 


QUESTION  OF  THE  DUMPING-GROUND.  53 

third  paper.  Suppose  that  we  have  free  coinage,  and  that 
under  the  working  of  Gresham’s  law  our  gold  begins  to  flow 
to  England.  What  will  be  the  result  on  the  price  of  gold 
at  that  point  to  which  it  flows  ?  Manifestly  gold  will  there 
decline,  and  it  will  continue  to  decline  as  long  as  the  process 
goes  on. 

But  wlutt  will  be  the  result  at  the  point  from  which  the 
gold  goes  abroad?  There  the  two  thousand  millions  of 
money  will  be  reduced,  let  us  say,  to  fifteen  hundred  mil¬ 
lions  by  the  exportation  of  five  hundred  millions  of  gold. 
What  will  be  the  effect  on  the  price  of  all  the  remaining 
money?  Silver,  being  a  large  part  of  the  remainder,  neces¬ 
sarily  begins  to  appreciate  under  the  increased  demand  and 
the  diminished  supply  of  money,  audit  will  continue  to  appre¬ 
ciate  as  long  as  the  exportation  of  the  dearer  metal  continues. 
The  price  of  that  metal  declines  in  London,  and  continues  to 
decline.  The  price  of  silver  rises  in  New  York,  and  con¬ 
tinues  to  rise.  The  process  goes  on  until  the  action  of 
Gresham’s  law  is  inevitably  reversed.  It  goes  on  until  the 
question  solves  itself  by  the  certain  and  tolerably  speedy 
equalization  of  the  price  of  the  two  money  metals  in  the 
market  of  the  world. 

38.  Question  of  the  Dumping-Ground. 

They  tell  us  also  that  in  case  of  the  restoration  of  our 
coinage  to  the  condition  which  it  held  prior  to  18T3,  America, 
that  is  the  United  States,  will  become  the  dumping-ground 
for  all  the  silver  in  the  world.  Train-loads,  boat-loads,  ship¬ 
loads  of  silver  will  be  seen  coming  from  every  direction. 
The  country  will  thus  be  overwhelmed  with  a  debased  cur¬ 
rency  worth  intrinsically  but  little  more  than  copper  or  iron. 
This  bugbear  of  the  Goldite  imagination  has  been  exhibited 
to  the  people  in  every  place  with  the  accompaniment  of  dec¬ 
lamation  and  calcium  light. 

But  where  is  this  imported  silver  to  come  from  ?  What 
country  is  to  produce  it  ?  Where,  for  example,  would  Eng¬ 
land  or  France  get  the  silver  to  send  to  us?  Would  they 
buy  it  of  the  United  States  in  order  to  bankrupt  us  by 
returning  us  our  own  product  ?  As  for  Germany,  would  she 
pull  down  the  mediaeval  plate  from  her  feudal  castles  and 
ship  it  as  bullion  to  America  ?  Russia  has  barely  her  own 
supply  and  must  frequently  resort  to  the  American  market  to 
get  what  she  needs  for  coinage  and  the  arts.  Great  Britain 
has  been  obliged,  for  a  long  time,  to  buy  in  the  American 


54 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


market  from  forty  to  fifty  million  ounces  of  silver  annually. 
The  American  mines  virtually  supply  the  demand  of  the 
world  for  silver  ;  and  yet  under  free  coinage  we  are  told  that 
our  country  would  be  flooded  with  foreign  importations ! 
There  might  be  such  a  thing  as  the  importation  of  Russian 
lumber  into  Wisconsin,  or  East-Indian  cotton  into  Georgia, 
or  Egyptian  corn  into  Iowa;  but  a  serious  importation  of 
silver  into  the  United  States  is  an  unthinkable  absurdity. 

39.  Wickedness  of  the  “Silvek  Barons.” 

The  minions  of  the  money  power,  in  their  frantic  efforts  to 
blind  and  pervert  the  judgment  of  the  American  people,  seek 
also  to  prejudice  and  enrage  them  against  the  “  silver  barons.” 
Miners  and  mine  owners,  if  it  chance  that  their  mines  are  of 
silver,  not  of  gold ,  are  held  up  to  the  scorn  and  contumely  of 
the  world.  The  people  are  asked  to  believe  that  there  is  an 
organized  coterie  of  wealthly  speculators  in  silver,  and  that 
they  are  combined  in  a  nefarious  scheme  for  promoting  their 
own  interests  at  the  expense  of  the  people  and  nation. 

These  “silver  barons”  are  to  send  their  53-cent  bullion  to 
the  mints  of  the  United  States  and  compel  its  coinage  into 
100-cent  dollars,  thus  enriching  themselves  at  the  expense  of 
the  nation.  At  the  same  time  the  nation  is  to  impoverish  the 
people  by  returning  to  them  only  53-cent  dollars !  Miracu¬ 
lous  is  this,  that  the  dollars  thus  dropping  from  the  national 
mints  are  to  signify  100  cents  each  to  the  silver  barons,  in 
whose  interest  they  are  coined,  and  only  53  cents  each  to  the 
rest  of  the  people  ! 

But  what  about  the  gold  barons  ?  Why  should  they  be 
virtuous  and  patriotic  while  the  silver  barons  are  so  base? 
Are  not  the  gold  speculators  —  if  such  there  be  —  even  as 
the  others  ?  Is  it  honorable  to  be  a  gold  miner  and  dishonorable 
to  be  a  silver  miner?  Do  not  the  two  pursuits  stand  upon 
precisely  the  same  merits  ?  Is  it  not  as  just  and  true  to 
charge  the  owners  of  our  gold  mines  with  conspiracy  and  des¬ 
perate  intrigue  against  the  government  and  national  honor, 
as  it  is  to  rail  against  the  “  silver  barons  ?  ”  Why  should  we 
hold  gold  miners  in  one  estimation  and  silver  miners  in 
another  ? 

The  fact  is  that  the  American  people  are  not  concerned  in 
this  controversy  with  the  fortunes  of  either  silver  producers 
or  gold  producers.  The  American  people  wish  well  to  the 
silver-mining  interest,  and  will  promote  it  as  much  as 
may  be  without  favoritism  or  injustice.  The  American 


SHALL  WE  WAIT  ON  FOREIGN  NATIONS?  55 

people  wish  well  to  the  gold-mining  interest,  and  will 
promote  that  also  as  much  as  may  be,  without  subser¬ 
viency  or  prejudice  to  other  forms  of  human  industry. 
They  will  promote  and  favor  all  mining  as  much  as  they 
will  promote  and  favor  any  of  the  other  primary  pur¬ 
suits  by  which  the  world  is  made  richer,  by  which  com¬ 
merce  is  impelled,  by  which  manufacture  is  suggested,  and 
the  agricultural  life  inspired.  But  beyond  this,  the  Ameri¬ 
can  people  care  nothing  for  the  “  silver  barons  ”  or  for 
the  gold  barons  —  for  either  or  for  both. 

The  question  before  the  American  people  is  not  a  question 
of  mining.  It  is  not  a  question  of  getting  silver  bars  or 
gold  bars  out  of  the  caverns  of  earth,  and  their  conversion 
into  merchandise  or  coin  by  combinations  of  interested  men. 
The  American  people  consider  this  question  from  the 
national  point  of  view.  The  special  interest  is  disregarded. 
The  cry  of  “  silver  baron  ”  is  no  argument  against  the  pro¬ 
duction  of  silver  and  its  use  as  money.  The  charge  that 
the  demand  for  the  restoration  of  complete  and  impartial 
bimetallism  in  the  United  States  is  a  measure  to  favor  the 
silver  barons  is  as  false  as  it  is  absurd. 

40.  Shall  We  Wait  on  Foreign  Nations? 

Another  point  in  the  policy  of  the  gold  jobbers  of  the 
world  is  their  pitiful  plea,  that  we  should  conform  our  finan¬ 
cial  policy  or  rather  our  monetary  system  to  that  of  “  the 
great  commercial  nations.”  This  phrase,  u  great  commercial 
nations,”  means,  in  the  concrete,  England.  Our  financial 
policy  should  be  English.  If  we  attempt  an  American 
policy,  all  the  woes  are  predicted.  Every  calamity  from 
local  disorder  to  national  bankruptcy  will  come  down  on  us 
like  night.  This  they  tell  us  we  must  do,  namely,  await  the 
consent  of  England  before  undertaking  a  policy  of  our  own. 

Bimetallism,  if  it  is  to  he  reached  at  all,  says  plutocracy 
must  be  reached  by  “  international  agreement.”  So  depen¬ 
dent  are  we  !  True,  England  has  thirty-seven  millions,  and 
we  are  seventy  millions  of  people ;  but  we  are  younglings, 
weaklings !  We  are  in  the  infantile  stage !  How  should 
we  know  what  kind  of  monetary  system  we  desire  ?  True, 
we  are  naturally  a  bimetallic  nation.  Nature  provided  this 
for  us  before  the  world  was.  Great  Britain  is  a  monome¬ 
tallic  nation.  She  produces  gold,  but  does  not  produce  sil¬ 
ver.  She  has  to  buy  her  silver  of  us.  She  wants  a  dear 
market  for  gold  and  a  cheap  market  for  silver.  But  we, 


56 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


according  to  the  dictum  of  the  money  gamblers,  must  wait 
for  bimetallism  until  Great  Britain  assents  to  it. 

We  have  the  spectacle,  in  1896,  of  a  political  platform, 
carefully  excogitated  by  one  of  the  great  parties,  in  which  is 
written  this  supreme  absurdity  :  We  favor  a  gold  standard; 
but  we  also  favor  bimetallism ;  we  favor  loth  !  W e  favor  the 
gold  standard  because  we  must .  We  favor  the  bimetallic 
standard  because  we  would.  We  let  UI  cannot  wait  upon  1 
would”  We  would  have  bimetallism  if  England  would 
consent!  We  will  have  monometallism  because  England 
will  not  consent !  If  she  would  only  consent,  we  would 
favor  free  coinage.  Since  she  does  not  consent,  we  favoi 
gold  coinage  only.  On  this  preposterous,  abject,  and 
wholly  un-American  platform,  a  great  party  calls  for  the 
support  of  an  intelligent  people ! 

41.  False  Charges  of  the  Plutocrats. 

Aye,  more,  the  creators  of  this  extraordinary  platform 
turn  upon  the  genuine  American  patriots,  who  stand  up  for 
their  own  country  and  will  have  nothing  of  foreign  dictation 
and  foreign  domination  in  our  financial  system,  and  denounce 
them  in  a  storm  of  epithets  and  objurgations,  the  like  of 
which  have  never  hitherto  been  heard  in  party  warfare. 
Because  men  favor  American  bimetallism  and  will  have  it, 
the  churlish  opposition  of  Great  Britain  to  the  contrary  not¬ 
withstanding,  they  are  denounced  as  enemies  of  their  coun¬ 
try.  We  are  called  “  repudiators,”  “  defilers  of  the  national 
honor,”  “  robbers,”  “  lunatics,”  “  communists,”  u  anarchists,” 
and  indeed  everything  which  the  vocabulary  of  vituperation 
can  furnish. 

The  idea  that  the  masses  of  the  American  people,  who  have 
rallied  by  the  million  to  the  standard  of  free  coinage,  are 
repudiators,  communists,  anarchists,  and  robbers  is  too  absurd 
to  require  refutation.  To  it  all  we  answer  with  one  argu¬ 
ment  —  contempt.  There  is  only  one  kind  of  anarchy  in 
•  this  country  and  that  is  the  high-up  anarchy  of  the  million¬ 
aires.  They  it  is,  and  not  others,  who  defy  the  law  and 
consider  themselves  above  both  law  and  law-makers.  They 
it  is,  who  regard  the  constitution  as  a  rag.  T/iey  it  is,  who 
regard  the  government  as  their  possession  and  even  the  army 
as  their  agent  for  enforcing  a  plutocratic  despotism  upon  the 
masses. 

These  men  are  few  but  powerful.  They  are  said  to  num¬ 
ber  in  all  between  four  and  five  thousand  in  the  United 


FALSE  CHARGES  OF  THE  PLUTOCRATS. 


57 


States,  though  they  are  probably  twice  that  number.  They 
are  combined  in  a  common  cause.  Among  them  there  are 
many  honorable  exceptions.  To  the  credit  of  humanity  be 
it  said  that  there  are  millionaires  who  are  as  great  as  they 
are  wealthy.  Others  are  as  noble  as  they  are  strong.  Some 
of  them  have  gone  so  far  as  to  renounce  their  kind  and  to 
espouse  the  cause  of  the  people ;  but  the  great  majority  are 
bound  together  in  an  effort  to  put  the  people  down,  and  to 
stamp  upon  the  residue  of  popular  liberty. 

In  the  United  States  there  is  no  prejudice  against  the  rich. 
There  may  be  some  natural  jealousy  among  the  poor  directed 
to  those  who  are  in  abundance  and  ease ;  but  there  is  no  deep 
or  settled  prejudice  towards  them.  It  is  not  because  the 
millionaires  are  millionaires  that  they  are  disliked  and 
dreaded  by  the  masses  of  the  American  people,  but  because 
they  are  tyrants  and  spoliators.  They  are,  we  repeat,  the 
only  practical  anarchists  in  the  United  States.  They  believe 
in  no  government  but  their  own.  They  trust  nothing  to  the 
good  will  and  justice  of  their  fellowmen.  They  wholly  de¬ 
spise  and  contemn  free  institutions.  They  look  with  supreme 
contempt  upon  democratic  government.  They  think  popular 
elections  the  means  of  perpetuating  the  bad  and  of  engender¬ 
ing  mobocracy.  They  heartily,  in  their  souls,  disbelieve  in 
democracy  in  all  of  its  moods  and  forms,  and  squint  ever  at 
monarchy  and  the  restoration  of  monarchy,  and  the  spread  of 
it  into  America  as  the  greatest  good. 

Than  these  men,  no  human  beings  could  be  further  re¬ 
moved  from  the  standard  of  true  American  manhood.  They 
are  wholly  un-American.  They  are  unpatriotic.  They  are 
untrue  to  society.  They  are  true  to  nothing  but  themselves 
and  their  own  selfish  interests.  They  regard  life  as  a  battle 
to  preserve  and  increase  the  millions  which  they  have  heaped 
up  by  the  spoliation  of  society.  They  concede  nothing  to 
the  masses.  They  regard  the  masses  as  no  more  than  the 
concrete  of  clay  and  sand  on  which  their  own  superb  palaces 
are  reared.  For  men  as  men  they  care  nothing.  Humanity 
to  them  is  dirt.  Human  rights  they  disregard.  Liberty  they 
trample  on.  By  them  the  great  public  is  openly  damned. 
Government  they  try  to  destroy  —  except  in  so  far  as 
government  will  serve  them.  They  conform  in  a  word 
to  the  exact  definition  of  anarchists.  They  will  have  no 
government  at  all  —  no  control,  no  supreme  authority  over 
them  —  unless ,  forsooth,  they  can  construct  such  authority  by 
their  own  agents  and  be  sure  that  when  it  is  constructed  it 


58 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


will  operate  only  for  the  promotion  of  their  interests  and  the 
further  destruction  of  the  interests  of  the  people  at  large. 

42.  Hatefulness  of  the  Money  Despotism. 

All  forms  of  despotism  are  repulsive  and  inhuman ;  but 
nearly  all  of  them  have  some  redeeming  traits.  Every  kind 
of  slavery  is  degrading  to  the  human  race ;  but  even  slavery 
is  sometimes  touched  with  the  pencillings  of  humanity  that 
excuse,  if  they  do  not  redeem,  it.  The  oriental  tyrant  of 
antiquity  put  men  and  nations  under  the  wheels  of  his  war- 
car  and  dragged  them  along ;  but  he  sometimes  encouraged 
enlightenment  and  promoted  peace.  The  Roman  emperor 
was  the  bloated  and  conscienceless  exponent  of  a  cruel  race 
whose  bloody  passions  were  untempered  by  any  of  the  softer 
and  more  serene  virtues ;  but  he  had  great  strength  of  char¬ 
acter  and  was  sometimes  magnanimous.  Marcus  Aurelius 
was  a  poet,  philosopher,  philanthropist  —  a  gentle  and  humane 
ruler,  the  latchet  of  whose  sandal  the  age  was  not  worthy  to 
unloose.  The  feudal  lords  of  the  middle  ages  were  cruel 
and  ferocious  chieftains ;  but  they  brought  chivalry  into 
Europe  and  scattered  the  germs  of  politeness  and  literature 
wherever  they  built  their  castles. 

The  average  European  king  has  been  an  ignorant  and 
arbitrary  wretch  ;  but  he  has,  in  many  instances,  shown  true 
courage  and  a  praiseworthy  devotion  to  his  subjects.  The 
old,  proud  devotee  of  African  slavery  in  the  United  States 
—  the  owner  of  a  thousand  human  chattels —  was  not  infre¬ 
quently  humane  and  good.  Mark  well  the  character  of 
George  Shelby,  the  friend  and  avenger  of  poor  Tom.  The 
great  generals  of  the  Confederate  Army  (and  they  were  great 
generals)  were  nursed,  not  a  few  of  them,  on  the  bosoms  of 
old  mothers  as  black  as  their  souls  were  white ;  but  the 
Money  Pow6r  —  the  Plutocracy  !  what  shall  we  say  of  that  ? 

Other  kinds  of  wrong  and  oppression  have  been  redeemed 
Avith  something  so  like  the  virtues  of  life  as  to  make  them 
tolerable ;  but  the  money  power,  the  imperial  plutocracy 
Avliich  is  now  entrenching  itself  in  every  quarter  of  the  world 
and  planting  its  batteries  for  the  defence  of  a  colossal 
despotism  built  on  the  ruins  of  human  liberty,  is  untouched 
Avith  any  gleam  of  discoverable  goodness !  It  is  unredeemed 
by  a  solitary  trait  that  history  may  record  in  its  favor.  It  is 
the  coldest,  cruelest,  coarsest  and  most  irrational  tyranny  that 
ever  had  mankind  under  its  heel !  It  is  the  most  calculating, 
Mephistophelian,  low-flying  form  of  power  that  ever  triumphed 
over  the  rights  and  hopes  and  aspirations  of  man. 


THE  NATION  AT  LAST  AWAKE. 


59 


Princes,  nabobs,  tyrants  of  all  kinds  and  degrees,  have 
been  wont  to  relent  sometimes  and  display  themselves  in 
better  mood;  but  not  so  plutocracy.  They  are  sometimes 
generous  and  kind,  but  the  money  power  never  !  Plutocracy 
once  victorious  over  man  will  bind  him,  as  it  is  now  attempt¬ 
ing  to  do,  cast  him  down,  and  sit  on  his  breast,  smoking  che¬ 
roots  and  sipping  absinthe,  while  the  crows  pick  out  his  eyes 
and  premature  worms  wriggle  in  the  sockets ! 

Plutocracy  in  America  will  be  even  as  it  is  in  Ireland. 
Here  also,  as  there,  it  awaits  its  opportunity  to  evict  the 
humble  toiler  and  his  wife  and  children  from  their  hovel, 
and  to  fling  broken  chairs  and  straw  mattresses  after  them 
into  the  night.  Here  too,  as  in  Russia,  it  is  ready  to  seize 
upon  the  insurgent  patriot  of  the  field  or  village  and  send 
him  whirling  into  Siberian  exile.  Here  too,  as  in  India,  the 
Nabob  and  Begum  are  waiting  their  opportunity  to  build  up 
ivory  palaces  and.  tombs  out  of  the  proceeds  of  the  toil  of 
American  peasants.  Here  too,  as  in  every  land  under  the 
sky  where  it  has  gained  the  victory,  plutocracy  only  awaits 
its  opportunity  to  laugh  freedom  to  scorn,  to  put  democracy 
under  foot,  and  to  hale  civil  liberty  to  prison  and  to  death. 

43.  The  Nation  at  Last  Awake. 

To  the  alarming  aggressions  of  the  money  power,  the 
nation  is  at  last  awake.  The  common  people  are  in  revolt. 
Their  instincts  and  reason  and  sense  of  justice  have  led  them, 
at  last,  to  break  through  the  meshes  of  falsehood  that  self- 
interest  and  unscrupulous  power  have  woven  around  them 
and  to  rise  in  political  insurrection. 

Once  on  a  time  the  tocsins  sounded  in  France  to  the 
answering  shout  of  “  the  people  risen  against  tyrants.”  That 
great  uprising  was  flecked  with  blood  upon  a  background  of 
flame  and  devastation.  The  American  revolt  is  not  of  this 
frightful  kind.  It  is  the  indignant  but  quiet  uprising  of  the 
New  Democracy.  It  is  a  political  revolt  which  portends  a 
peaceable  revolution  in  the  administration  of  government. 
It  portends  simply  this  :  the  restoration  of  the  government  to 
the  people  and  its  conduct  in  the  people’s  interest.  It  signi¬ 
fies  the  revival  of  the  old  patriotic  and  uncorrupted  theory  of 
our  Republic ;  namely,  that  it  is  a  republic  resting  upon  the 
consent  of  the  masses  and  administered  in  their  interests.  It 
is  a  revolt  against  the  new  and  spurious  theory  of  the  Repub¬ 
lic,  that  it  rests  upon  the  support  of  special  interests  and  is 
administered  for  the  good  of  the  classes  only. 


60 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


44.  It  is  a  Revolt  of  the  Producers. 

The  political  insurrection  of  1896  is,  first  of  all,  an  uprising 
of  the  producers  against  those  powers  that  have  for  thirty  years 
planned  to  take  and  consume  the  products  of  labor  without 
just  or  adequate  compensation.  It  is  a  revolt  of  the  farmers, 
of  the  merchants,  of  the  humble  artisans,  of  the  tradespeople, 
of  all  who  labor  in  field  or  shop  or  market  to  create  the 
resources  of  life  or  to  distribute  them  to  consumers.  It  is  a 
revolt  of  all  the  primary  industries,  and  of  the  secondary 
industries  involved  therewith,  against  those  high-up  industries 
which  under  the  false  and  arrogant  pretense  of  being  func¬ 
tions  of  the  “  business  interests  ”  of  the  United  States,  are,  in 
reality,  only  variations  in  the  great  sport  of  gold  gambling. 
Be  assured  that  these  methods  of  getting  gain  which  prevail 
around  the  bourses  and  in  the  exchanges  of  great  cities,  both 
American  and  European,  are  not  business  at  all.  They  are 
refined  and  dishonest  methods  invented  by  the  ingenuity  of 
the  beneficiaries  for  getting  something  for  nothing ;  for 
appropriating  the  proceeds  of  the  labor  of  the  millions  with¬ 
out  even  the  semblance  of  an  equivalent ;  for  grabbing  by 
sleight  of  hand,  the  wealth  of  others  without  incurring  the 
dangers  of  the  law. 

45.  What  are  the  “Business  Interests”? 

What  are,  in  fact,  the  “  business  interests  ”  of  America  ? 
The  business  interests  are  production  as  well  as  merchan¬ 
dising.  They  are  manufacturing  as  well  as  trade.  They  are 
ail  the  honest  and  rational  industries  of  the  people  applied 
first  to  the  soil,  secondly  to  the  shops,  thirdly  to  the  stores 
and  streets ;  last  of  all  and  highest  of  all,  to  the  intellectual 
and  moral  resources  of  the  nation.  The  idea  that  business 
is  that  high-up,  occult  and  shadowy  fact,  which  we  see  in 
spectral  outline  behind  the  bond,  behind  the  stock  exchange, 
behind  the  secret  conclave  of  millionaires  banqueting  at 
night,  is  one  of  the  false  and  pernicious  aphorisms  which  the 
enemies  of  public  liberty  have  promulgated,  by  a  subsidized 
press,  to  delude  the  people  and  lead  them  to  their  own 
destruction. 

Nay,  nay  ;  business  is  not  speculation.  It  is  not  gam¬ 
bling.  It  is  not  bond  selling  and  bond  holding  and  bond  job¬ 
bing  ;  but  it  is  something  better  than  these.  Business  is  the 
garden  and  the  orchard.  "Business  is  the  humble  potato 
patch  and  turnip  field.  Business  is  the  ploughed  land,  the 


WHAT  ARE  THE  “  BUSINESS  INTERESTS  ”  ?  61 

fallow  land,  and  the  barn-yard  with  its  cackle,  its  bleat  and 
its  clatter  of  incoming  wagons  —  with  its  neigh  of  horse  and 
answering  low  of  bullock  and  cow  and  ox.  Business  is  the 
meadow  and  the  oat  field.  It  is  the  corn  field  and  the  field 
of  golden  wheat.  It  is  the  cotton  field  bursting  into  a  field 
of  snowflakes,  and  the  dark,  waving  sea  of  sugar  cane.  It 
is  rice  and  flour  and  hominy  and  bacon  and  beef.  It  is  all 
the  resources  of  life  taken  from  the  ground  and  from  the 
animal  kingdom  by  the  industries  and  energies  of  the  free 
and  patriotic  laborers  of  America. 

Business  is  also  the  dark  mine  of  coal  and  iron ;  of  copper 
and  lead  and  silver  and  gold.  It  is  the  deep  shaft  into 
which  free  men  go  down,  not  to  become  slaves,  but  to  remain 
free  men  in  the  dark  caverns  below,  and  to  rise  with  their  car¬ 
loads  of  carbon  and  heavy  heaps  of  ore  free  as  they  were 
before.  Business  is  the  riches  of  the  underground  as  well  as 
of  the  soil.  The  miner  shall  not  be  counted  out  from  the 
list  of  business  men ;  for  a  business  is  his,  more  important 
to  the  interests  of  the  world  than  is  the  business  of  the 
speculator  in  stocks  or  the  wrecker  of  railways. 

Business  also  is  the  shop.  It  is  the  place  of  the  bench  and 
the  forge.  It  is  the  plank  wall  where  the  carpenter’s  planes 
and  saws  and  hammers  are  hung.  It  is  the  blacksmith’s 
anvil  and  his  glowing  fire  and  his  ponderous  sledge.  It  is 
the  wagon  shop  and  the  shop  of  the  plow.  It  is  the  manu¬ 
factory  where  implements  of  husbandry  and  the  industrial 
arts  are  made  by  thousands ;  where  men  are  gathered  by  hun¬ 
dreds  and  by  thousands  ;  where  the  saw-dust  makes  misty  the 
air,  and  the  shavings  of  wood  and  iron  and  steel  spin  with 
singing  noise  from  a  hundred  lathes;  where  the  tires  are 
welded,  and  the  wheels  are  made,  and  wagons  and  carriages 
and  reapers  spring  up  under  the  industrious  hands  of  free 
men.  It  is  every  establishment  which  enterprise  has  cre¬ 
ated,  which  genius  has  developed,  which  industry  and  inven¬ 
tion  have  perfected  for  the  good  of  the  human  race. 

Business  also  is  trade.  Commerce  is  one  of  the  honorable 
pursuits  of  men.  Business  is  the  store.  It  is  the  mart.  It 
i  ;  the  street  and  the  lumbering  vehicle.  It  is  the  wharf  and 
the  boat  and  the  ship.  It  is  the  flying  train  traversing  the 
land  of  the  free  with  its  cargo  of  life  and  its  burden  of  mer¬ 
chandise.  Business,  in  a  word,  is  not  gambling  but  honest 
work.  The  “  business  interests  ”  are  the  interests  of  the 
laboring  people  of  America,  and  not  the  special  interests  of 
stock  jobbers  and  money  kings,  of  speculators  and  manipu¬ 
lators  and  bond  gamblers  on  two  sides  of  the  sea. 


62 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


But  business  is  more  than  this  ;  more  than  all  of  these. 
It  rises  still  higher.  There  is  a  business  of  the  mind  and 
heart.  The  schoolhouse  is  business,  and  the  academy  and 
the  college.  Every  place  where  human  beings  are  taught 
the  elements  of  a  nobler  life  is  business.  The  mother’s  knee 
and  yearning  heart  are  business,  without  which  the  world 
would  be  a  blasted  desert.  Invention,  too,  is  business  and  so 
are  art  and  learning  and  literature.  Every  upward  impulse 
of  the  human  soul,  seeking  for  noble  things,  is  business,  and 
woe  be  to  him  that  chokes  it !  W oe  to  him  who  strangles 
the  mind  and  denies  to  the  opening  intellect  the  blessing  of 
the  sunshine  and  the  day!  Type  and  composing-stone  and 
revolving  cylinder  of  Hoe,  and  printed  leaf,  on  its  flying  mis¬ 
sion  of  truth  to  men,  are  business.  The  book  and  the  map 
are  business  as  well  as  the  shovel  and  the  saw.  There  is  one 
business  of  the  body  and  another  business  of  the  mind.  It 
is  business  to  labor  with  the  hands  and  it  is  also  business  to 
labor  with  the  thought.  To  speak  and  to  write  in  the  cause 
of  truth  is  business  as  well  as  to  turn  the  soil  or  wield  the 
sledge  or  drive  the  flying  train. 

46.  Attempt  to  Create  Fictitious  Issues. 

Meanwhile  the  attorneys  of  the  International  Gold  Trust 
are  striving  hard  to  create  fictitious  issues  upon  which  to 
induce  the  people  to  divide  and  agitate.  One  boss  says,  Lo 
here ;  and  another  boss  says,  Lo,  there.  Now  it  is  the 
revival  of  the  tariff  question ;  now  it  is  the  mythical  Monroe 
Doctrine ;  now  it  is  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  or  Cuba  ;  now 
it  is  Venezuela;  now  it  is  Armenia  ;  now  it  is  this  and  now 
it  is  that,  in  the  hope  that  the  people  may  be  deluded  there¬ 
with  and  lose  sight  of  the  fundamental  question  of  their 
wrongs  until  what  time  they  shall  be  completely  bound  and 
translated  out  of  the  character  of  free  men. 

How  much  further  this  malevolent  and  ruinous  work  can 
be  carried  on  before  the  end  comes  no  man  may  well  foretell. 
Summer  and  winter  come  and  go  and  the  distress  of  the 
country  continues  unabated.  A  measure  of  forced  activity 
has  been  produced  in  the  business  world.  After  the  horrors 
of  a  three  yearn’  prostration  the  haggard  workman  returns 
downhearted  to  his  tasks.  A  crippled  tenant  husks  the  corn 
in  a  field  that  was  his  own.  He  is  an  old  soldier !  The 
farmer  and  the  mechanic  labor  on  in  hope  deferred  that  a 
better  day  is  coming.  Whether  it  will  ever  come  depends 
upon  the  people  themselves. 


SHAMEFUL  SUBSERVIENCY  OF  A  POLITICAL  PARTY.  63 


In  one  of  the  inspired  passions  of  the  French  Revolution, 
the  Democrats  made  a  statue  like  a  Titan,  and  set  it  up  near 
where  the  Bastile  had  stood.  They  called  it  Le  Peuple 
Hercule .  It  was  the  People  Hercules.  It  represented  the 
great  ideal  in  its  strength  and  majesty.  Whenever  the  spirit 
of*such  an  ideal  shall  repossess  our  American  citizenship,  the 
end  will  come,  and  the  people  will  recover  their  own. 

4T.  What  is  it  to  be  an  American  Patriot? 

What  is  it,  then,  in  this  year  eighteen  hundred  and  ninety- 
six  to  be  a  true  American  ?  What  is  it  to  be  a  patriot  ?  It 
is  to  stand  under  the  broad  folds  of  the  stars  and  stripes  and 
defy  the  world !  It  is  to  be  an  independent  man,  afraid  of 
nothing.  It  is  not  to  taunt  the  Old  World  nations  or  to 
denounce  them ;  for  they  too  are  composed  of  peoples  who 
toil  and  wait.  They  are  as  human  as  we.  To  be  an  Ameri¬ 
can,  a  patriot,  is  to  love  mankind  and  to  try  to  serve  the 
human  race.  It  is  not  to  strut  and  parade  ;  but  it  is  to  love 
our  country  and  to  honor  our  country  more  than  all  else  in 
the  world.  It  is  to  revere  the  memory  of  our  fathers.  It  is 
to  glorify  the  Revolution  that  made  us  free  and  independent. 
It  is  to  believe  the  Declaration  of  Independence  the  greatest 
and  best  political  document,  the  noblest  charter  of  freedom 
and  equality,  that  was  ever  traced  by  the  pen  of  man.  It  is 
to  love  American  things  because  they  are  American.  It  is  to 
defend  our  free  institutions,  at  every  challenge,  even  with  the 
life. 

To  be  a  true  American  is  not  to  fawn  or  creep  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  any  power  or  combination  of  powers  in  the  world. 
It  is  to  stand  up.  It  is  to  demand  and  have  our  own.  It  is 
to  be  above  the  blandishments  of  authority  and  the  corrup¬ 
tions  of  money.  It  is  to  despise  the  mercenary  spirit,  and  to 
look  at  human  life  as  something  nobler  than  merchandise. 
It  is  to  walk  abroad  “  with  malice  toward  none,  with  charity 
for  all.”  It  is  to  look  with  compassion  rather  than  hatred 
even  on  the  truckling  un-American  hordes  of  plutocracy 
cringing  at  the  knees  of  foreign  States  and  daring  not  to 
step  or  breathe  without  the  consent  of  the  directors  of  the 
bank  of  England. 

48.  Shameful  Subserviency  of  a  Political  Party. 

The  spectacle  of  a  great  political  party  in  America  await¬ 
ing  the  beck  of  England !  The  spectacle  of  a  party  submit¬ 
ting  its  platform,  after  publication ,  to  a  syndicate  of  Anglo- 


64 


THE  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 


American  bankers,  whose  hearts  are  in  one  country,  while 
their  brains  are  in  another !  The  spectacle  of  such  a  party 
parading  itself  as  the  patriotic  party,  as  the  American  party 
par  excellence ,  as  the  embodiment  of  pure  purpose  and  politi¬ 
cal  virtue !  Surely  the  day  of  impudent  mendacity  has  risen 
on  the  world,  and  the  two-faced  giant  of  Sham  has  usurped 
the  throne  of  truth. 

The  standard  bearer  of  this  party  of  subserviency  bows 
down  with  his  followers  and  leads  them  in  prayer  before  a 
foreign  throne.  In  accepting  his  nomination  to  be  President 
of  the  United  States  —  the  greatest  and  highest  station  in  the 
world  —  he  says;  “  Until  international  agreement,  it  is  the 
plain  duty  of  the  United  States  to  maintain  the  gold  stand¬ 
ard.”  He  further  says  :  “  The  Republican  Party  has  declared 
in  favor  of  international  agreement,  and  if  elected  President 
it  will  be  my  duty  to  employ  all  proper  means  to  promote  it.” 

This  is  humiliating  !  Bimetallism  is  either  right  or  wrong. 
It  is  either  a  good  policy  for  the  United  States  or  it  is  a  bad 
policy.  If  it  is  good,  the  Republican  candidate  wants  to  post¬ 
pone  the  good  until  Great  Britain  will  let  us  have  it !  If  it 
is  bad,  he  is  in  favor  of  it  unless  Great  Britain  will  not  let  us 
have  it !  If  the  gold  standard  is  good  he  will  uphold  it  only 
so  long  as  Great  Britain  is  for  it !  If  the  gold  standard  is 
bad  he  will  stand  for  it  always  until  Great  Britain  consents 
to  bimetallism  !  Good  or  bad,  he  and  his  party  are  in  favor 
of  the  one  or  the  other  just  as  Great  Britain  shall  dictate. 
Political  shame  and  humiliation  can  go  no  further ! 

The  writer  of  this  claims  to  be  an  American.  He  claims 
to  be  a  patriot.  The  venerated  dust  of  his  revolutionary 
great-grandfather  is  at  rest  in  a  humble  grave  on  the  crest  of 
an  Old  Virginia  mountain.  I  shall  not  go  back  on  the  graves 
of  my  ancestors.  Many  of  them  have  fought  the  battles  of 
freedom.  Their  blood  is  fresh  and  hot  in  the  veins  of  their 
descendant,  and,  by  the  stars  on  high,  he  will  stand  by  their 
memory  and  glorify  their  deeds  and  honor  their  record  to  the 
end  of  his  days  !  I  believe  in  Independent  America  and  in 
her  institutions ;  the  one  shall  live,  and  the  other  shall  be 
defended  by  true  hearts  and  brave  voices,  while  the  world 
endures  ! 

49.  Wit  at  Follows? 

If  plutocracy  wins  the  impending  battle,  what  follows  ? 
We  do  not  venture  on  prophecy  but  only  point  out  the  logical 
and  historical  tendency  of  a  present  victory  of  the  money 


WHAT  FOLLOWS? 


65 


power  over  the  people.  Such  a  victory  tends  to  bring  in  a 
long  train  of  disastrous  results  to  the  American  people,  and 
if  to  them,  then  to  the  whole  civilized  world.  If  the  battle 
goes  against  the  people,  plutocracy  will  become  not  only  tri¬ 
umphant,  but  rampant  and  riotous  in  its  triumph.  It  will 
turn  victory  into  license.  It  will  at  once  proceed  to  fortify 
itself  and  to  make  sure  of  all  that  it  has  won.  It  will  recom¬ 
pense  itself  liberally  for  all  its  alarm  and  expenditure.  It 
will  laugh  to  scorn  all  protest  and  moderation. 

In  the  first  place  the  gold  standard  will  be  fixed  and  forti¬ 
fied,  and  under  it  all  the  values  of  the  world  will  be 
bolted  down  as  if  in  an  iron  sarcophagus.  All  legal-tender 
paper  money  will  be  cancelled  and  destroyed.  This  part  of 
the  programme  is  already  openly  declared.  The  existing  sil¬ 
ver  coinage  will  next  be  attacked,  and  not  a  dollar  of  it  will 
be  spared  as  primary  money.  It  will  be  sent  to  the  silver¬ 
smiths,  to  the  smelting  pots  of  two  continents,  to  the  bullion 
shops  of  every  mart,  to  the  mints  for  subsidiary  coinage,  to 
every  place  where  it  may  be  consumed,  until  not  one  dollar 
of  our  old  constitutional  money  shall  remain. 

The  vacuum  thus  produced  in  the  money  supply  of  the 
people  will  be  filled  with  bank  bills,  issued  and  loaned, 
expanded  and  contracted,  at  the  pleasure  of  the  owners.  The 
banks,  with  a  small  stock  of  gold,  will  send  out  their  own 
notes  ad  libitum ,  till  the  country  is  filled  to  plethora.  Money 
will  be  wonderfully  “  easy,”  and  for  the  day  the  false  verdict 
against  the  people  will  be  glorified.  But  in  another  day,  the 
first  day  of  alarm,  this  great  nation  will  fall  prostrate  before 
the  banks.  Then  will  come  a  panic  in  comparison  with  which 
all  preceding  financial  storms  that  have  swept  the  country 
will  be  as  zephyrs  to  the  awful  hurricane.  Such  will  be  the 
ruin  that  the  fragments  of  exploded  enterprises  will  not  be 
worth  the  gathering.  Before  such  a  storm  not  a  single 
legitimate  business  can  survive.  He  who  wishes  to  con¬ 
tribute  to  this  catastrophe,  and  to  hasten  its  coming,  has  only 
to  follow  his  leaders  until  the  victory  of  the  money  power  over 
the  people  shall  be  confirmed  by  a  majority  of  votes. 

And  in  the  twentieth  century,  what?  For  the  ominous 
shadow  of  the  present  reaches  far  into  the  future.  It  requires 
no  prophetic  eye  to  discern  the  consolidation  of  political 
power  following  hard  after  the  consolidation  of  wealth.  With 
that  comes  a  great  standing  army,  and  then  the  total  suppres¬ 
sion  of  popular  liberties.  Then  the  masses  in  the  cities  will 
become  the  hotbeds  of  sedition,  and  the  masses  in  the  country 


66  THE  .  BOND  AND  THE  DOLLAR. 

will  subside  into  a  peasantry  without  hope.  The  commercial 
and  social  league  with  Great  Britain  will  be  made  organic 
and  perpetual.  Bondholding  will  be  the  one  honored  and 
profitable  enterprise  of  men.  Production  will  get  a  servile 
reputation,  and  labor  will  become  the  vocation  of  serfs.  The 
European  condition,  in  a  word,  will  come  and  prevail,  and 
of  free  American  citizenship  will  be  a  thing  of  tradition. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  people  shall  win  the  fight,  a  new 
era  of  freedom  and  progress  will  open  to  the  people  of  our 
country.  The  success  of  the  popular  cause  will  signify  the 
beginning,  but  not  the  completion ,  of  a  work  upon  which  nearly 
all  that  is  good  in  civilization  depends.  If  the  people  win,  it 
will  be  the  triumph  of  Men  over  Things.  It  will  be  the  lift¬ 
ing  up  of  American  manhood.  It  will  be  the  assurance  that 
no  form  of  slavery  shall  exist  under  the  stars  and  stripes.  It 
will  be  the  confirmation  of  the  work  of  Washington,  of  Jef¬ 
ferson,  and  of  all  the  patriots  of  the  Revolution.  It  will  be 
the  ratification  of  the  life  and  work  of  Lincoln  and  of  the 
great  statesmen  and  warriors  who  surrounded  him  in  the 
dark  but  heroic  days  of  our  national  trial.  It  will  be  the 
victory  of  truth  over  falsehood ;  of  right  over  wrong ;  of  jus¬ 
tice  over  injustice ;  of  republican  virtue  and  democratic 
simplicity  over  aristocratic  arrogance  and  the  hollow  pride 
and  tinsel  of  an  artificial  life. 

Such  a  victory  will  bring  back  the  nation  and  people  to 
the  straight  ways  and  modest  ambitions  of  the  fathers.  It 
will  check  the  license  of  wealth,  and  put  a  bit  in  the  mouth 
of  plutocratic  lawlessness.  It  Avill  be  the  proclamation  of 
justice  among  men  and  the  subjection  of  all  the  combina¬ 
tions  of  greed  to  the  rights  of  the  individual.  It  will 
re-establish  local  self-government;  decree  equal  burdens  to 
the  rich  and  the  poor;  foreshadow  the  adequate  reward  of 
labor ;  give  assurance  of  protection  to  all  alike  in  the  enjoy-, 
ment  of  the  blessings  of  life  and  liberty.  It  will  make 
impossible  the  further  cunning  and  fraudulent  manipula¬ 
tion  of  our  currency  —  the  further  substitution  of  a  long  and 
dishonest  dollar  for  the  honest  dollar  of  the  law  and  the 
contract.  It  will  save  to  us  a  portion,  at  least,  of  the 
peoples’  money.  It  will  rescue  from  destruction  the  rem¬ 
nant  of  our  old  national  greenbacks,  made  sacred  with  the 
memories  of  the  Union  War.  It  will  make  certain  not  only 
the  preservation  of  our  existing  supply  of  silver  money,  but 
will  open  the  mints  to  both  metals  alike.  It  will  break  the 
corner  on  gold,  and  reduce  the  exaggerated  purchasing 


WHAT  FOLLOWS? 


67 


power  of  that  metal  to  the  normal  standard.  It  will  restore 
and  maintain  the  commercial  parity  of  the  money  metals  and 
compel  other  nations  to  follow  our  lead  in  the  cause  of 
universal  bimetallism,  which  is  simply  the  option  of  the 
debtor  to  pay  in  the  cheaper  and  more  convenient  standard 
unit  of  either,  according  to  his  preference  and  the  terms  of 
the  contract.  It  will  destroy  a  hundred  prevailing  monetary 
and  financial  fallacies  which  have  been  invented,  always,  in 
the  interest  of  the  fundholders  of  the  world  and  never  in  the 
interest  of  the  people.  It  will  bring  back  the  government,  in 
all  its  departments,  to  the  noble  manners  and  pure  practices 
which,  during  the  first  century  of  our  existence,  made  us 
the  pride  and  envy  of  the  nations.  It  will  put  in  authority 
men  of  the  people.  It  will  present  a  President,  a  Congress, 
and  a  Supreme  Court  to  whom  the  welfare  of  the  people  is 
the  first  great  concern  and  to  whom  syndicates  and  trusts 
and  all  special  interests  are  either  unknown  or  of  no  concern 
at  all.  It  will  open  the  way  for  the  great  and  salutary 
reforms  to  which  the  attention  of  the  people  is  already 
turned,  but  which  have  thus  far  been  postponed  or  defeated 
by  the  ruling  powers  in  our  government.  It  will  restore  to 
honor  the  agricultural  life.  It  will  make  a  coal  mine  as 
respectable  as  a  bank.  It  will  decree  the  honor  and  respecta¬ 
bility  of  all  honest  labor,  and  turn  the  sarcasm  of  prostituted 
art  against  the  gamblers  of  the  stock-pit  and  the  arrogant 
progeny  of  idle  wealth. 

If  the  nineteenth  century  closes  in  the  United  States 
with  an  unequivocal  victory  of  the  people,  it  will  be  the 
fitting  counterpart  of  the  great  battle  which  was  fought  and 
won  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century.  That  heroic 
epoch  was  called  the  Age  of  Revolution ;  this  shall  be 
called  the  Age  of  Humanity. 


The  Leading  Liberal  and 
Reformative  Review  Published  in 


the  English-speaking 


A  Word  to  Men  and  Women  Who  Think. 


Thoughtful  and  earnest  men  and  women  are 
everywhere  beginning  to  appreciate  the  fact  that  we 
are  in  the  midst  of  a  period  of  transition.  New 
ideas  in  the  social,  economic,  ethical  and  religious 
world  are  taking  the  place  of  those  which  have  held 
the  popular  mind  for  generations,  while  in  the  do¬ 
main  of  education  and  of  science  the  rapid  progress 
which  has  marked  the  last  few  decades  has  opened 
up  broader  vistas  on  every  hand.  In  many  respects 
this  century  resembles  the  renaissance.  In  every 
direction  we  see  the  old  ideals  giving  place  to  newer, 
broader,  higher  and  finer  conceptions.  It  will  be  the 
mission  of  the  ARENA  for  the  ensuing  year  to  voice 
these  larger  truths  and  nobler  conceptions  by  a  series 
of  papers  dealing  with  the  living  issues  along  the 
various  highways  of  vita)  thought.  Especially  will 
it  emphasize  the  problems  which  relate  to  the  happi¬ 
ness  and  well-being  of  humanity,  and  the  triumph 
of  justice,  freedom  and  knowledge  over  tyranny, 
prejudice  and  ignorance. 


FOR  1897  WILL  BE  STRONGER,  BRIGHTER,  ABLER 

AND  MORE  ATTRACTIVE  THAN  EVER  BEFORE. 

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